|
|
|
22nd September, 2006
Dr. David R. Young,
Managing Director,
Oxford Analytica
One of the privileges of being the Managing Director is that you can break your own rules, so while I made you all try and stick to your schedule, I did wander from seminar to seminar. I have been uneasy about what to say in light of that. I have come away with a real sense of uneasiness or uncertainty about where we are. The first line that comes to mind is Dickens’, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
I started to think, “Why have people come to the conference? Why did you come? What did this time mean to you?”
Keep that in mind for a minute.
The picture I got was that there is a growing global political correctness that is pretty heavy in the air. I won’t go through the examples; you have all been reading the papers. There is a sense that this political correctness on a global scale is bringing a sense of intimidation. At first the press feels it, then politicians feel it, and then even the academics feels it.
To have one of the dons that has worked with me for 25 years say, “Listen if you want me to really say what I really believe, you are going to have to take out a life insurance policy on me,” - now that is half in jest but it has a very profound truth under it. I think there is a sense all over the world that something is wrong in the equation between our ability and desire to express ourselves and our freedom, our sense of freedom to do so.
In the Terrorism Seminar, the Religion and International Affairs Seminar, the Middle East Seminar it seems the overlap was that there has to be a real definition of what one might call the “global public square.”
In the definition sense, and I owe this definition to Os Guinness who has been writing on this for a long time, a public square is a place where citizens of a country, but now of the world, come together to discuss the common affairs of life. And while you can think of the public square in terms of the US public square and the UK public square, the Internet now makes it such that when anyone says anything, it is in the “global public square.” What we need to find is a way to allow our opinions and our views and our values to be freely expressed in that “global public square” with civility, respect, and without an appeal to violence, intimidation, or fear. I think this is really fundamental, that we learn to live with our deepest differences.
The freedom we need is very complicated and is also very simple. In its simple form, I like to think of freedom as having three dimensions. Many of you know that I have written and spoken about the three dimensions of power. I think they can also be applied to freedom.
Now, we have come to take all these for granted, but they are the values that underpin our lives, our cultures, our civilization; who we are, the way we think and act day to day, how we live. They are fundamental.
The question is, “Will we abandon them or will we defend them in this ‘global public square’? And how will we define them?”
My former boss, Henry Kissinger is not given to apocalyptic language but, in an editorial in the Washington Post just last week, this is what Kissinger wrote:
“The debate sparked by the Iraq war over American rashness vs. European escapism is dwarfed by what the world now faces. Both sides of the Atlantic should put their best minds together on how to deal with the common danger of a wider war merging into a war of civilizations against the background of a nuclear-armed Middle East.”*
Now that is pretty strong stuff for Kissinger to put in writing. It should make one step back and pause and reflect. One of the things Kissinger calls for and which bears on our Conference is that leaders on both sides of the Atlantic need to pull together the best minds they can. There are not always just two options. Leadership must be creative, as Kennedy was in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and come up with a third or more options. Our leaders must lead.
The final verses of a poem for a young man- A Psalm of Life- by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, comes to mind:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
Toynbee’s monumental Study of History, also can help us. The essence of which is that when a civilization responds to challenges, it grows. When it fails to respond to a challenge, it enters its period of decline. Essentially, we have to remember who we are and how we came to have the values we do, we have to respond, we have to keep stretching for a better way or disappear.
Let me take you back to my first point. Why did you come to the Conference? What have you gained from the last couple of days?
I always like to think of it as a mountain top experience; it’s rich, it’s solid, it’s substantive, it’s sound. You are all people in leadership positions. It isn’t just John Negroponte; it isn’t just the President; it isn’t just the Prime Minister. It is all of you in your own walk of life.
So I hope that each of you has gained some sense of perspective in these last couple of days that gives you confidence to pick up on that challenge. It is not a simple world we are heading into. It is not a calm sea we are heading into. And I must say, that in the 23 years that I have stood up here, I am now more uneasy and more concerned. Maybe that is just because we are being hit by more things. I don’t think I am given to pessimism; in fact I am probably an optimist. But I thought that this was worth putting on the table.
I want to thank you so much for joining us. It has been a great couple of days and I hope that you are taking home a sense that you have a role to play in meeting this challenge and that we have been able to help you.
Thank you, God Bless, and goodnight.
Dr. David R. Young is Managing Director of Oxford Analytica.
