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I was going to write some comedy about Nathan blaming the US Left anti-war movements for their fatally flawed foreign policy vacuum as if that were the cause of the US war on Iraq. But never mind.
Justin, this quote is a much more positive assertion to examine.
I actually think there is an obligation to be a hero, if it falls to you by circumstance. In fact I would go so far as to say such an obligation is the quintessential meaning to the entire sweep of humanism and enlightenment history. In other words, it is the very font of revolution, human liberation, and radical hope.
That we might and possibly will fail to meet that obligation is what makes most people such an enigmatic mix of despair and promise, that is, alive.
I think the young expect to readily meet these obligations and when they fail or muddle through without much success they take a predictable fall. Later if they reflect and work on understanding the various forces that have shaped their experience and actions, they realize that somehow they have been joined to people from all over the world and all across history.
That understanding along with its modest successes and failures forms something like a solidarity with the universals of human experience. That is something wonderful.
But those discoveries lay forever dormant if those obligations are never taken up in the first place.
Chuck Grimes