The need for moral renewal

There is often a very thin line between the real and the imagined, like an invisible border on the ground between two countries, two regions, two villages. No checkpoints, no barbed wire, no customs inspection. Just the feeling that something has subtly changed. They speak a different language here. They see things differently on this side of the mountain. Or do they? Maybe it's all a question of translation, of carrying ideas and meaning across from one mind-set to another. But doing so with integrity and truthfulness.

Speaking at the Athens Democracy Forum last week, Michael D. Higgins, president of Ireland, spoke of the need to "translate thought that is not confined by borders." This is lateral thinking in its most constructive, most honest performance, something which Higgins realizes is lacking in a discourse which is at present exclusive rather than inclusive, and, in...