Israel the David has become Israel the Goliath. In the eyes of millions, a much-admired underdog withstood heroically, even miraculously in June of 1967, the threat of annihilation from the giant military menace of the combined Arab armies. Four and a half years later this underdog has become, in the minds of those same millions, an aggressive, obstinate, muscle-bound upstart, not only blocking all possibilities for normalcy in the Middle East but, far more dangerously, threatening the peace of the world. As this reversal of image hardens, political postures change. Here in America, those in the political center see Israel as an obstacle to broader economic trade and thus to easier diplomatic relations with the vast Arab world, while from the left, Israel stands condemned as an imperialist tool of the capitalist powers, preventing the legitimate national liberation of millions of oppressed Arab fellahin.

In early 1971, national attention was focused on two trials, the court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley for involvement in the Mylai massacre, and the trial of Charles Manson and associates for the Tate/LaBianca murders. Both trials were widely perceived as paradigmatic, though different people had different paradigms in mind. In the paradigm of the "Left," it was precisely American society that was on trial in Fort Benning. In the paradigm of the "Right," the Manson trial became the trial of the counter-culture. For some, those convinced of the imminent demise of American society, both trials together were paradigmatic of America's descent into a jungle of murderous irrationality (this last paradigm was especially prominent in foreign commentary, as, for example, in that of the German news magazine Der Spiegel).

My title comes, of course, from Carl Becker's poignant and ironic book on the Utopian thinkers of the Enlightenment. The poignancy in Becker's work came from his sympathy for their ideal of a society transformed, a mankind fulfilled. The irony came from his pained perception that these eighteenth-century thinkers had made things absurdly easy for themselves, by supposing that the order of nature—correctly understood—contained the code for a benign society, without ancient tyrannies and traditional terrors. The optimism and self-confidence of the Enlightenment have long since vanished. Anguish, even desperation, mark the writings of the contemporary heirs of the Enlightenment, the Western European Marxists. The revolution seems always to recede over the historical hbrizon. It is far too early for another Becker to record their chronicle. History may, in the end, show them to be at least as successful as their spiritual ancestors and perhaps more so. I wonder, however, whether they may be imitating the eighteenth-century in one important respect.

Rome hulks large on the landscape of our historical memory. Among history's hills and valleys the Roman Empire stands out, a craggy peak dominating the horizon. Our civilization, like others, springs from many nations and peoples, but ancient Rome and the empire its people created have a continuing fascination for present-day Americans. The mummies of Egypt intrigue us by their mystery, and the pyramids impress us by their sheer massiveness, but to most of us Egypt is but an historical curiosity to contemplate in a museum on a Sunday afternoon. Likewise, our memory of Greece is piecemeal and-fragmented, transmitted to us as a melange of literary and intellectual masterpieces. College students read Plato and Aristotle for philosophy, Euripides and Sophocles for drama, and Homer for epic, but Greece conjures no political or military grandeur as a people or an empire.

George Kennan, a prominent spokesman of the "realist" political school, said some years ago: "Let us face it: in most international differences elements of right and wrong, comparable to those that prevail in personal relationships, are— if they exist at all, which is a question—simply not discernible to the outsider. Where is the right and wrong of the Kashmir dispute? I am glad it is not my task to seek it. And how about the conflict between the Israeli and the Arabs? The very establishment of the State of Israel, at which we Americans warmly connived, was—whether right or wrong—essentially an act of violence."

There was more than one crime involved in the tragedy of Mylai. Behind the immediate facts of the massacre lie a host of charges which ultimately amount to an indictment of America as a political society. Since we are prosecutors as well as defendants, we have been tempted to drop the charges and to lower the voice of outrage to a timorous whisper. But that murmur will be insistent and eventually maddening; nations, as well as individuals, can be pursued by the Furies. The accusations must be taken up and examined, for they reflect an inescapable crisis in our political life which taints the present and threatens the future.

The world community does not seem to care." This judgment appears in almost every analysis of the situation in Bangla Desh, formerly East Pakistan. North Americans know little about the politics of Pakistan, the geography of suffering, the moral issues involved. What is more, "compassion fatigue" has set in and our capacity for moral outrage is dormant, at least where the agonies of remote millions are concerned. Still we can, as Hugh McCullum, for example, does in the September, 1971, Canadian Churchman, make an effort to personalize the plea to help save the life of a Bengali refugee.