The Politics of Being

Abstract

In the year in which our association reached its Biblical allotment of three score and ten, we seem unable to escape the message of the old Anglican churchman who, on hearing the sounds of a distant funeral procession, reflected that “No man is an island entire of itself…any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” In this year, we could not afford the pretense of being just a “professional association” without ties to political realities and social issues. We accepted that we are involved in humankind, and that means more than parochial interests and isolated political acts.