The concrete actions of each person can save the world from hatred, selfishness, coldness and lack of caring. This is VietNamNet’s urgent call to the people of the planet.  

 

A Day for Reconciliation

American leading expert on political media to visit Vietnam

“Each of us has a role to play in the normalization process”

 

VietNamNet on September 8 launched the Reconciliation Website at http://day0909.net, where readers can contribute their ideas to promote the World Reconciliation Day.

VietNamNet, Vietnam’s leading on-line newspaper, and many Vietnamese and foreign intellectuals, joining with the people of all walks of life, all over the world who are dreaming and working for a peaceful and worthwhile life, choose this day, September 9 as “World Reconciliation

Day.”

 

On this day, we call on the leaders of the world to stop acts that make people feel wretched and fearful. Let’s stop manufacturing weapons. Let’s stop terrorism and terrorist organizations.  Let’s stop gunfire and wars. Let’s build a world where every person can sleep peacefully.

 

On this day, let’s make our homes, our offices, our villages and our cities into heavens on Earth. Imagine a day without bloodshed, without conflict, without selfishness, without curses, without plots, without sins, without hunger and without cold indifference to others’ suffering.

 

It’s a day for each of us to express our inner goodness, bringing altruism, understanding and love to others. A day when we will read immortal verses and words of mankind about our love together. 

 

A day where we will listen to wonderful pieces of music and draw splendid pictures of this world together. A day that each of us sits in front of another to say ‘Forgive Me’ and ‘I Love You.’

 

A day when each of us wakes up with the thought that ‘Today I will bring pleasure to another human being.’  And when we give our kindness to someone, we will feel happy in our own hearts.

 

Let’s live together this way at least for one day. Living any other way is not living for others but for ourselves. Because when we hate somebody, the darkness covers our heart and damages us, not the ones we hate. This is a truth that most of us have experienced.

 

Let’s together turn September 9 into “World Reconciliation Day,” a day of altruism, sharing and love. We only need to live one such day to immediately see a miracle of change.

 

Professor Thomas E. Patterson - Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center - wrote this to VietNamNet on the occasion of the Day for World Reconciliation. 

 

“In a world beset by conflicts, grievances, hatreds, and suspicions, no idea is more powerful than that of reconciliation. It does not require forgetting, or even forgiveness, but it does require an honest respect for others and a willingness to pursue a better future.

 

“It is an idea that is gaining strength within nations. Australia has a National Reconciliation Week that recognizes the historical injustices visited upon its indigenous peoples by European settlers. South Africa has a Reconciliation Day to help its people overcome the legacy of Apartheid. The United States unofficially has two such days, one to promote reconciliation among individuals and one to recognize and overcome the legacy of slavery. These are only some of the examples, and there are numerous other efforts, labeled differently, that seek to promote friendship, spirituality, and nonviolence and to end conflict, hatred, and injustice.

 

“The challenge is to strengthen and extend the commitment to reconciliation. It will take an international effort, much like the one that led to the establishment of Earth Day, which is now celebrated in most of the world’s nations and has raised global environmental awareness.

 

“For that to occur, leadership - visionary leadership - will be required, and it will have to come from many places and through many venues. Vietnam is in the forefront of this effort, with its reconciliation concert and day. No country is better suited through its history, culture, and friendship with the world’s nations to provide this leadership than is Vietnam. The moment has come for peoples and nations elsewhere to follow its example, making September 9 the world’s Reconciliation Day.”  - Thomas Patterson

 

Harvard University Professor Thomas Patterson is a leading American political scientist, the author or co-author of many influential books on the US media and the public.

 

His first book, "The Unseeing Eye", was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books on public opinion in the past half century.

 

Dr. Patterson is also the author of Mass Media Election and two general American government texts: "The American Democracy" and "We the People".

 

His articles have appeared in Political Communication, Journal of Communication and other academic journals, as well as in the popular press.

 

Patterson’s book “Out of Order” won the Graber Award of the US Political Science Association. Former US President Bill Clinton called it  “necessary for any American politician or journalist.”

 

His latest book, “The Vanishing Voter,” looks at the causes and consequences of electoral participation.

 





















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