A quick note at the end of the month

A post that originally appeared here on my blog last Saturday was published on Il Sussidiario as Foreign Policy after the G-20: A New Naiveté? The world in which we live is getting ever more complex. I think this requires us to be more, not less, coherent and consistent. Therefore, we must have clearly defined objectives. One objective has to be not allowing Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal.

If further proof were needed for the thesis I set forth in my Il Sussidiario piece, Iran provided it this week by conducting missile tests. This is the response we get from unilaterally standing down, or, as Mark Helprin put it, blinking.

I also draw your attention to Msgr. Albacete's current Il Sussidiario column The Death of Journalism. His article concludes with this sobering observation: "When concern for the truth disappears, this is what happens: politics become entertainment and entertainment becomes politics. Actually, the situation is even worse. The problem today is not just a lack of concern for the truth; it is a loss of interest in truth. When that happens, sooner or later, a cruel violence takes its place, against celebrities or non-celebrities alike. This is another result of the split between faith and knowledge and its inevitable consequence: the destruction of reason." What connects my article to Albacete's is that while we lose interest in the truth we cease to engage the world with the requisite seriousness, like being convinced by a foreign policy that refuses to see what is happening and to take account of it; it is a policy "indicative of an ideological idealism at odds with reality." On this somber note, we come to the end of September 2009.

I was reminded elsewhere today of Goya's axiom "The Sleep of Reason Prodcues Monsters"