The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

The loudest applause of the day went to Obama. I had sent him an email with a few ideas for his speech. But after looking out at the swelling crowd—a heartening sight to a former community organizer—he started with Scripture: In the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 24, Verses 11 and 12, it reads as follows: Rescue those being led away to death, Hold back those staggering toward slaughter! If you say, “But we knew nothing of this!” Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done? Obama proceeded to take note of how tempting it often is to look away, and how complex modern challenges can seem: There are problems in the world that sometimes seem overwhelming. There’s so much misery, so much want, so much conflict and cruelty, so much violence. And at times there’s lack of moral clarity. We look across the span of the globe and we can’t always tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. We don’t always know what the proper course of action is. And so we’re sometimes tempted to withdraw into our own private lives, our own private struggles and ambitions, our own private gardens. But this is not one of those times. Today we know what is right and we know what is wrong. The slaughter of innocents is wrong. Two million people driven from their homes is wrong. Women gang raped while gathering firewood is wrong. Silence, acquiescence, paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong.