The year 1972 seemed fateful to those who cherish the commitment of American democracy to the tradition of checks and balances. Indeed, as the year ended, the realization was beginning to dawn that the nation was on the edge of a full-scale constitutional crisis.

Nineteen seventy-two was the year when President Nixon reopened the door to China, then mined Haiphong harbor and bombed the city of Hanoi; when he visited Moscow, concluded a treaty limiting strategic arms and directed Henry Kissinger to announce that peace was "at hand," then suddenly renewed and intensified the bombing, suspended it for thirtysix hours at Christmas, renewed it, then stopped it again—all without explanation to the people on whose behalf he was acting.

Until a few years ago it was dogma for most of us that Marxism was the negation of the most central values of the Christian faith. Faith believes in God. It faces history as an open process which can be invaded by the unexpected. Marxism, on the contrary, is radically atheistic. It takes the material components of life as the only ones to determine the future of mankind.

A conversation between Richard Shaull who wrote Containment and Change at the beginning of 1966 and the Dick Shaull who is trying to find his way in the confusing situation at the end of 1972.

Nearly a dozen years ago I coined the term "Covenant Theology" (Commentary, July, 1961) to designate the central thrust of an emerging existentialist interpretation of Judaism. Since then the expression has had some currency, though questions have been raised as to its adequacy. In my own work over the years, looking at Judaism as a Covenant relationship has proved so consistently useful that I consider my old coinage to have been quite a happy one. (I capitalize to indicate I am referring to God's Covenant with the people of Israel rather than any other covenant, say, that with the Sons of Noah.)

The sudden death of Carnal Abdel Nasser sent a seismic shock across Egypt and the entire Arab world," wrote an observer in Cairo at the time. He reported that the streets and byways of the city were quickly transformed into torrents of bewildered and hysterical humanity voicing their shock and grief in spontaneous couplets of crude verse. "O Gamal, O Light of the Eye—you have left us, why, O why?" "O Numeri, O Quadafi—Abdel Nasser has left us and vanished away!" Most surprising (since Muslims do not lightly parody their creed) was the cry, "There is no God but God—and Abdel Nasser is the Beloved of God."

Ghana is a warm and passionate country where people are not ashamed of emotions. Three outbursts, very emotional and very different, marked his passage. On March 6, 1957, everyone turned out in their Sunday best, prim and neat, the children lined up before their parents for the ceremony making their colony the first to attain independence in Black Africa. The British flag was lowered, that of Ghana raised. All eyes turned toward the man who had worked this great change and would now lead them toward the promise. On February 24, 1966, after the shooting stopped, hastily organized and often spontaneous demonstrations began.

The movement for a governed world has undergone a mutation recently and shows signs of again becoming an important factor in the intellectual and political worlds—for the first time since the early 1950's. The new federalism, or, if you like, neo-federalism, is no less idealistic than the old, but the time scales are different and the policies more pragmatic.

Organizations and movements are not the same thing. The movement for a federated world really got under way immediately following World War II, and at first there was a high degree of congruency between the United World Federalists and the movement.

Among most analysts concerned with the morality of warfare, the rule of proportionality— that the seriousness of the damages inflicted must not exceed the seriousness of the injury to be prevented by the war—holds a central place. That rule was prominent in several recent contributions to this magazine, including ones by me and by Paul Ramsey (see the issues of April and November, 1972). In any application of the rule one must take into account damages and benefits to all participants and observers: "our" side, "their" side, those caught in between and the presumed beneficiaries elsewhere.

The force behind the egalitarian impulse to create a society of equals is a basic human desire for justice, "for a temporal order of things that 'makes sense.'" So Irving Kristol said in a recent essay. He is, of course, right. However, this isi where the true problem, the puzzle, begins. For our ingrained sense of justice produces identical "gut ' reactions," such as feelings of indignation, in regard to very different, indeed sometimes even diametrically opposed, alternatives.