On peace... and war

I just watched President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. He spans the arc from "the world as it is," where war is sometimes necessary, to what nations and individuals can do to build a peace where people are not free solely of violence but also of want, a world where their fundamental rights are respected. Like a sermon, it was sobering, but it left me present to a simple but hardly easy conviction: a hope, perhaps even a belief, that things can get better.

The speech expresses Obama's foreign policy instincts which many are calling "realistic idealism." You can watch it here and read it here.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their fundamental faith in human progress -- that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

(Video link)