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By John A. Howard, Ph.D.
A little story will be a helpful lead-in to this theme. It’s about
a medieval knight. Late one afternoon, he was returning to the castle, and he
was a pitiful sight to see. His horse was limping and he was skewgee in the
saddle. His armor was dented, his lance was broken and the proud plume on his
helmet was crumpled and hung down over his face. The Lord of the castle saw him
coming and rushed out to meet him. “What terrible thing has befallen you, Sir
Percy?” he asked.
“Oh, sire,” he
said, “I have been laboring all day in your service, robbing and pillaging your
enemies to the West.
“You’ve been doing
what!!” exclaimed the nobleman.
Thinking he was
hard of hearing, the knight replied, much louder, “I have been robbing and
pillaging your enemies to the West.”
“But I haven’t any
enemies to the West,” was the horrified reply.
“Oh!” said the
knight. And then, “Well, I think you do now.”
There is a moral
to this story. Enthusiasm is not enough. You have to have a sense of
direction.
For a long time,
Meg Greenfield wrote the editorials on the last page of Newsweek. On
December 14, 1998, when she knew she didn’t have long to live, she wrote a
chilling wake-up call to America. It seems to have disappeared down the memory
hole without causing even a sigh from the dormant conscience of the readers.
[Continued...]
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