ken burns

Ken Burns gave the keynote address at my commencement at Georgetown, which is worth reading in its entirety here. Here is a particularly inspirational excerpt:

"Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Convince your government that the real threat comes from within this favored land as Lincoln knew. Governments always forget that. Do not let your government outsource honesty, transparency, or candor. Do not let your government outsource democracy. Steel yourselves. Your generation will have to repair this damage. And it will not be easy.

Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country -- they just make our country worth defending."

(the photo is from a masbah I visited on a farm outside Damascus)