terrorist targets) warfare as an instrument or extension ofnnational policy, even the policy of self-defense is no longernreally feasible.nUnthinkable is, I believe, the correct adjective. That therenare wars going on, here and now, within and between mostnof the nations of the earth is a fact beyond the interest ofnmost of these advanced thinkers.nI am reminded of the celebrated 60’s, when rape seemednstatistically likely to become a new national pastime andnwomen were advised not under any circumstances ever tonresist a rapist. Exactly the opposite advice is freely given inncourses and seminars nowadays. I am reminded of the NavynShark Repellent in World War II, a colorful dye which,nwhile it evidently had no effect on sharks one way or thenother, at least allowed a brief feeling of safety and securitynbefore the jaws clamped down.nNever mind.nLet us return to text. To Jefferson.nClearly, despite all his good wishes and even high hopesnfor some measure of domestic tranquillity, he envisionednthe quality which he conceived of and called liberty asnenduring only in a state of constant, unrelenting testing.nInterrogation by means of full debate and argument wherenfacts are assembled and known and where reason, itself, isnallowed to be and run free. Absent those conditions, henlikewise clearly believed (at least on this occasion) that it wasnmeet and right that genuinely significant issues should bensealed and settled in blood.nThat, if need be — no, more accurately, when need be fornhe simply assumed that, come what may, ignorance andnmisconception were inevitable companions — that whennneed be we should be ready, willing, and able to die for andnkill for our principles.nBut let us be pragmatic and try to get at the heart of whatnhe was saying as it may possibly apply to us.nOne cannot (to use that lovely media word) rule out thenpossibility, now or ever, of bloody acts of resistance andnrebellion (in whatever form) in the United States. What,nafter all, was the seizure of federal prisons and hostages innAtlanta and Louisiana but a clumsy act of rebellion? Onencannot ever rule out the possibility. But since the race riotsnof the late 1940’s and the late 1960’s, although we have hadnplenty of violent events and incidents, large and small, wenhave witnessed no full-scale, real and honest rebellion. Andnfor the present such a thing seems highly unlikely.nWhich may well mean that, in Jefferson’s own terms, wenlive at a time when the love of lethargy has at last replacedneven the hope of preserving liberty. Maybe . . .nOr it may mean that, for the time being, resistance andnrebellion must take place on the other fields where our greatnlife and death issues are being settled.nSettled, for better and worse. Not well or deeply discussed.nMany things are discussed, if only lightly debated,nbut next to none of the great and deep questions are beingnasked.nThis whole problem, which ought to have attracted ournattention and, at the very least, aroused the passion ofnintellectual anger, has been most passionately discussed notnby any American thinker of any persuasion, but by the greatnRussian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and only on onenoccasion — his baccalaureate address at Harvard in 1978.nYou will remember it. And I hope you will refresh yournmemory of his words by seeking them out again. …nHis observations are remarkable, subtle, profound, and, Inthink, as accurate and prescient as they are controversial.nMay I quote from a couple of paragraphs?n”There is yet another surprise for someone coming fromnthe East, where the press is rigorously unified; one graduallyndiscovers a common trend of preferences within the Westernnpress as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generallynaccepted patterns of judgment and there may be commonncorporate interests, the sum effect being not competitionnbut unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, butnnot for the readership, because newspapers mostly givenemphasis to those opinions that do not too openly contradictntheir own and the general trend.n”Without any censorship, in the West, fashionable trendsnof thought are carefully separated from those that are notnfashionable.n”Nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable willnhardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heardnin colleges. …”nIt continues . . .nIt earned Solzhenitsyn immediate and rabid denunciationnby the press he criticized. Gentle and wimpish liberalsnsuddenly discovered the “America-Love-It-or-Leave-It”nstandard and applied it directly to him.nTime has only allowed the uniform derogation of Solzhenitsynnby the press to slack off a little bit. One week agonthe Washington Post ran a lengthy feature: “Solzhenitsynnand His Message of Silence.” If you were to read the article,nyou would have discovered that his silence, in this case,nmeans that he turned down an opportunity to be interviewednby the Washington Post. They don’t suggest that hen• is crazy up there in Vermont. But they do at least imply thatnhe is keeping a low profile for a self-serving reason:n”It has even been suggested that, if Gorbachev meansnwhat he says, the work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn might benpublished in the Soviet Union for the first time in more thanntwo decades. Some of his fellow emigres believe Solzhenitsynnis silent for that purpose too: that he not jeopardize thenbest chance for his return to the motherland, in word if notnin deed.”nA bullet wound would, of course, be considerably morenpainful. But I doubt if firing a bullet at him could be a morenhateful act than writing those words.nAs long as they can kill their opposition with words, whynwaste bullets on any of us?nWorld of words, that’s where the battie — the ceaselessnwar of rebellion and resistance against intellectual andnspiritual lethargy, and for the sake of liberty — is going on.nThings have not improved much, if at all, since Solzhenitsynnspoke. Indeed the stereotypes he noted — the sculpturalnmuseum of modern group-thinks — have acquired thenpatina of dignity since then. Whole topics have beenndeclared to be off limits, beyond all legitimate discussion orneven historical reconsideration. In history and the so-callednsocial sciences, and even (alas) in the stricter sciences,nespecially medicine and biology, it is now widely acceptednand understood that evidence which weighs against fashionablencontemporary political and social positions is to bensuppressed, or at least modified and limited so as not to offernnnJUNE 1988121n