1. When we as people of a nation order or ask others to fight for any cause, we must treat them, their service, and their families with the highest practical lifelong honor and healing, that is, with more than just symbols or rhetoric.
2. As we order or ask for that service, from the first we must study the causes that we are fighting for, in light of all our truest values, not just the values that are convenient, expedient, self-serving or inadequately considered.
3. While we will likely never be a world without warriors, we owe it to the warriors—past, present and future—to be peacemakers.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America have a new public relations campaign. It is no secret that Big Pharma is not wildly popular, given the perception that pricing is surreal and marketing is out of control.
The inarguable point of the ad is that pharmaceuticals save and extend lives. To make that point, it uses the most moving poem of Dylan Thomas, one of the great modern poets:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
My request is emphatic and simple. Whatever the merits or demerits of Big Pharma, find some other way to make your case, and please leave Dylan Thomas out of it. He is way out of your league.
Bob Schwartz 