I understand that the first person quoted here is not a politician, and places himself at the service of all nations. Nevertheless he has a right and duty to address the truth that underlies how nations ought to be governed in the so-called "real world."
This person doesn’t brag about his past accomplishments, but he is not naive.
He has decades of global experience, particularly in Latin America. He lived through the 1980s and 1990s in Peru, during the days of the most brutal communist insurgency in the history of that continent — the dreaded, cult-like, murderous Sindero Luminoso (the "Shining Path"). He also lived through the almost-equally brutal State repression that followed under the government of Alberto Fujimori. He has seen — up close — the many sides of human power imposed without wisdom and justice. He has sacrificed himself immensely in order to care for many of its victims.
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The second person I quote below is a brash young man with no international experience and no sign of any familiarity with the wisdom that undergirds "the rule of law" and "peaceful civil coexistence." He places his trust in power. Unfortunately, he is currently the one of the architects of United States domestic and foreign policy:
"We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power" (Stephen Miller, cabinet official and ideologue of the present USA government).
I stand with Pope Leo. And I weep for my own country with its "zeal for war." I pray for my poor country, for its benighted and undisciplined leaders, and for the world that they risk setting on fire with their presumptuous ambition and recklessness.
God, save us and grant us wisdom, love, mutual respect, intelligence, justice, and peace.
