Editorials
COMMOHWEAL Yes, the vision thing urning points in the affairs of nations often emerge only after historians fix the time lines of their research. But sometimes such turning points are dramatically...
...We know for sure that the U.S...
...This dangerous delusion must give way to a renewed understanding of the common good and a sustained commitment to communality, the ability of each of us to anticipate the needs of others and the 23 October 1992: 3 willingness to meet them in a cohesive and coherent way...
...The dismantling of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Communist governments in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe have occurred over several years, and the outcome is still not clear...
...Turning points require them...
...Will the winner on November 3 be ready to cope with those limits and yet press against some daunting domestic and foreign problems...
...Above all, will the winner have the vision to imagine and inspire the American people to reckon with the risks of interdependence among ourselves and with other peoples...
...dominance in world affairs will be steadily trimmed and our history of sustained abundance will encounter strict environmental and economic limits...
...Our loss of common purpose is closely tied to the great taboo of this year's electoral politics—taxes, which perfectly symbolizes our challenge and our dilemma...
...The candidates have jousted for tactical advantage within narrowly framed differences, yet the winner, and the rest of us, will find the choices of the next four years, and their ramifications, swelling far beyond these constricted debates...
...For without resources in the public coffers we cannot (and do not currently) help pay for international peace-keeping efforts, cannot help support the struggles for democracy in Eastern Europe or South Africa, cannot help ensure the dignity and survival of millions of starving East Africans...
...For over forty years, our foreign and military policies were organized around these postwar shifts...
...No one needed a history book to recognize that 1918 and 1945 ushered in dramatically different periods from the ones preceding...
...But where is the comprehensive strategy to guide our foreign and military policy of the sort George Kennan provided in his now classic essay in Foreign Affairs on containment...
...Yet who can doubt that once again the world, certainly the North Atlantic portion, is in the train of another turning point...
...We have now lived through the era that began in 1945 with the defeat of Germany and Japan and the outbreak of the cold war...
...But sometimes such turning points are dramatically evident...
...Programs and policies that address these can only follow from leadership prepared to help Americans understand our limits—economic, environmental, social, and personal—and ready to inspire that subtle mix of belt tightening and generosity of spirit required in a society justly ordered to the common good...
...Or who has enunciated a domestic strategy on the order of Harry Truman's "Fair Deal," a pledge to extend postwar prosperity to all Americans...
...While this turning point in history is not coincident with the presidential campaign now drawing to a close, the absence of ideas by which to shape our future foreign and domestic policies is more than disappointing, it is deeply disquieting...
...The Soviet Union, our wartime ally, seized upon the victory over Germany to extend its empire into Western Europe...
...And as long as political leaders appeal to special interests and pander to what divides us, citizens will keep their resources from the common pot...
...Our enemies quickly became our political allies, and eventually our chief economic competitors...
...And to varying degrees our economy, our politics, and our culture were shaped by the commitment to contain the Soviet Union, with all of the fiscal and moral capital that goal required...
...So wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes...
...In 1992 the economic and political situation of the United States is changed, in part because the doctrine of containment and the Fair Deal were accurate maps diligently followed...
...We fancy ourselves a nation of individualists while we live in a world growing ever smaller and ever closer...
...Here at home the steady erosion of human dignity that follows upon homeless-ness, unemployment, school failure, and poverty as well as the corrosion of our material infrastructure, inner cities, schools, roads, and bridges follows upon a decade of private profligacy and public penury...
...Yet as long as most Americans do not see this society as their community, their fellow citizens as their neighbors, or this world as their responsibility, taxes are scorned and likened to highway robbery...
...This vicious cycle of antipolitics, antigovernment, antitaxes, must end...
...Taxes are what we pay for civilized society...
...Today we require new maps...
Vol. 119 • October 1992 • No. 18
