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tion, either with or without bloodshed, has made anything approximating
the progress that we have registered during the past generation. We have
made the greatest progress toward lifting living standards, toward im–
proving income distribution, toward enlarging the liberties of repressed
minority groups, and toward maintaining not only political democracy
but also an economic and social democracy in which people on the basis
of their efforts and abilities can move upward and are less hampered than
elsewhere by class, caste or original status.
This is not to say that we are doing as much as we should be doing
now, that we are planning adequately for the future, or that we should
rest on our oars. But if we take courage in what we have done, and learn
from experience how to do better, the combination of our economic
strength and institutions should continue to carry us forward in the years
ahead.
7. There is always promise to be found in the activities of young
people. They are less inhibited than others, less bound by the past, fresher
and more fertile in their thinking, and more concerned about the future
because they have more future to look forward to. Their activities, includ–
ing those critical of the status quo, should be encouraged.
At the same time, being young does not excuse from the exercise of
responsibility. There is a considerable tendency, among a substantial por–
tion of our young people, to engage in lazy protests, unaccompanied by
sufficient emphasis upon enlarging their store of relevant information and
fusing their protests with affirmative programs. It is easy to understand
this trend, particularly in view of an international situation which makes
young people particularly dissatisfied with what the future holds in store
for them. Nonetheless, I believe that, as they assume the task of citizen–
ship, they should prepare themselves better for these tasks than many of
them are now doing.
Robert Lowell
1.
Yes, nothing could matter more than who is in the White
House. It's not like the arts. Two very foolish novelists with opposed
beliefs or temperaments would write equally foolish novels, but two equal-
