After Hiroshima
In a 1974 radio address, Fulton Sheen raised the question of how “we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits?”
His answer isn’t about the student movements or anything about the Sixties. It’s about Hiroshima:
“I think it began on the sixth of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. That blotted out boundaries. The boundary of America that was the aid of nations, and the nations that were helped. It blotted out the boundary between life and death for the victims of nuclear incineration. Among them even the living were dead. It blotted out the boundary between the civilian and the military. And somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries.” (Quoted in The Race to Save Our Century , 19.)
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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