Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom; although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. 1 Corinthians 2:6-8
The aftermath of the prolonged war in southeast Asia and of the coinciding political crisis which has come to be symbolized in the name “Watergate” furnish temptation for most Americans to misapprehend and oversimplify the present situation and prospects for their society.
The accrued fatigue of these ordeals and scandals yearns for respite, as do the pent frustrations which find expression in cynicism and quietism. But besides such sentiments there is the easy tendency to exaggerate the villainy of presidents, or military and intelligence professionals, or other public officers -- as if their stupidity or malice, their practical incompetence or moral turpitude, their criminality or vanity were enough to account for the plight of the nation.
Thus people hallucinate: they suppose, for instance, that war is over, even though the war establishment is as deeply entrenched as it ever has been and even though the war enterprise, since the formal conclusion in Vietnam, has become more heavily financed. Even though the war policy of America is more reckless now because, as a war, Indochina means an American failure of disastrous magnitude. Or people imagine that the constitutional and political crisis was exposed and resolved in the prosecution of a few Watergate personalities and in the resignation of Richard Nixon, even though the unlawful excesses of the Nixon presidency and the criminal offenses of the Nixon cabal are known not to have been unique, and even though, in the case of Nixon himself, the constitutional process was aborted.
Read the Full Article
