A Pillar to Post: Harrison E. Salisbury

"I come of the generation which thought that the New Deal was the answer. At long last we were turning our imagination and energy to resolving our social ills and cleaning out the dark, festering corners to try to bring the city on a hill to life on this earth.

"What had it availed?

* * * * *

"I could not believe that the creation of an equitable society lay beyond our grasp. I knew better than most that the answer was not in a new utopia. I had seen how man transformed a utopia into a caricature, a bizarre Orwellian nightmare. I had seen in Russia the tragic perversion of the idealistic dream of the young Russians of the 19th century, who gave their lives to cleanse the social evil from their land, idealism and bravery turned to the mockery of the Gulag.

"Who had created a just society in which human beings could attain their true potential and look ahead to a bright future? China? I did not know China at this point. Scandinavia? Only a Swede could make Sweden's way work. America? We had possessed the dream, we had prepared our foundations, but the gap between ideal and reality was growing. Benign attempts to cure one social ill sowed the seeds of another. The architects of the bright future could not--even with computers--predict what new diseases might be born in the cure of the old."

from A Time of Change: A Reporter's Tale of Our Time
Harrison E. Salisbury, 1988