The East European Small Countries Have A

We Have Responsibilities For Others, Not Just Across Space But Across Time. We Have Responsibilities To People Who Came Before Us. They Left Us A World Of Institutions, Ideas Or Possibilities For Which We, In Turn, Owe Them Something. One Of The Things We Owe Them Is Not To Squander Them.

I Worry That We Have Forgotten That The De-ideologized, De-politicized, Uncontentious Public Space Of The Last 50 Years As Europeans Have Experienced It Is Not The Normal Human Condition. We Shall Be Sorry To Have Abandoned A Little Too Quickly The Institutions That Were Set Up By Our Parents And Grandparents To Protect Themselves Against A Return Of The Bad Old World. Because The Bad Old World Can Still Come Back To Haunt You.

Yugoslavia Served As A Reminder That The Lessons Of World War Two Were Only Partially Learned. There's A Great Line Someone Wrote In The Middle Of The 1990s, At The Time When Clinton Was Agonizing About Whether Or Not To Go Into Bosnia: "everyone Says, 'never Again. Never Again.' But All They Really Mean Is Never Again Will Germans Kill Jews In The Streets Of Warsaw".

If We Remain Grotesquely Unequal, We Shall Lose All Sense Of Fraternity: And Fraternity, For All Its Fatuity As A Political Objective, Turns Out To Be The Necessary Condition Of Politics Itself.

Reality Is A Powerful Solvent.