New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.
The man who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.
But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.
Both President Kennedy and President Reagan were roundly criticized by parts of the foreign policy establishment that felt they were being weak by engaging our adversaries. So some of it is built into a political lexicon that makes you sound tougher if you don't talk to somebody, and rather, very loudly, wield a big stick.
The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations–great or small–to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.