Words From a Modern Day Prophet

What follows is an excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitzyn's commencement speech at Harvard University on June 8,1978.What he said infuriated most of those in attendance and garnered much criticism from the New York Times and New York Post newspapers.Up until that day he had been the liberal media darling,that ended after this speech.I can't recommend strongly enough that you take the time and read the full speech online.This excerpt deals more with the government and its leaders. Later, I will post his comments as it relates to the American people. What he said was true then but even more so now.His last sentence describes perfectly the situation this present administration has in dealing with countries that are antagonistic to the U.S.
"I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the contemporary West, such as I see them. A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists."