Common Dreams
by Andrew Bard Schmookler

12/06/05

[W]hen I feel sorry for myself for this burden of having to battle against the Bushites: I remind myself of what my parents' generation had to sacrifice to meet the challenge of World War II. They, too, had lives they wanted to be living -- work they wanted to be doing, sweethearts they wanted to stay with -- but were instead compelled by what history had dealt them to set all that aside. Men of my father's generation not only had to interrupt their lives, they had to risk having no life at all -- and hundreds of thousands of them never returned -- in order to meet the threat posed to all they valued by the rise of evil. Looking at their example, I am able quickly to silence the voice of that inner baby-boomer who feels somehow entitled to have things the way he wants. The ease of our lives -- all that we've been able to take for granted for so long -- is the exception and not the rule in human experience. We have no good reason to suppose that we were promised a rose garden, that history would not some day call upon us to deal with dark and dangerous things...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1206-25.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp