Steve Tesich

About the Author: Steve Tesich is a playwright, screenwriter, and novelist whose works include the movie Breaking Away.

The Holy Roman Empire, it's been said, was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. By the same token, the New World Order of George Bush is neither new nor orderly nor concerned with the long-term welfare of the world. It is the same old world order reasserting itself in a violent way. Our motives for being engaged in the war in the Persian Gulf had as much to do with what we are fleeing as they do with the invasion of Kuwait.

We are fleeing, as we have for decades, from the unfulfilled pledge that we are one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. The hopeless...