The need for a civilizing force.

I heard Shimon Peres say something interesting, I thought, because people are so pessimistic about the Middle East. And he said something more optimistic. He said, “It’s like going forward with throwbacks.” It’s . . . there are obstacles. And you hope you’ll surmount them and you might. There were . . . right now you’re involved in the Internet. Well my goodness. That could be a terrible thing. It could be a force that isolates people. They don’t have human contact anymore. Everything is . . . Or, it could be a force that brings them together. And in fact, when you see people in . . . probably in the Middle East, he said, “Once they start to see what’s possible elsewhere in the world, and what they can achieve through cooperation in a modern world . . .” Modern has a lot of bad about it, but it has a lot of good. And whether it’s good or bad, we’re in it. And once they see what is possible to accomplish through education, through savings, through trying to improve their economic life, through getting together . . . once they see that, they’ll begin more to understand it, and that will be a tremendous civilizing force. And by “civilizing force”, I mean the force that really keeps out these incredible fanatics. And so what we’ve seen in the last 10 years is there is no magic solution to me. There are no magic solutions to keeping them out. Recorded on: 7/5/07