De una carta de John Lukacs a George Kennan:
«I start with what you write about your problems with your children […]. I think that in these times of the dissolution of an entire epoch in the history of a civilization, the most intimate and personal relationships are affected: those between men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children. That is no source of comfort. The children who break away from us nowadays – not only in the normal and expectable way at a certain stage of their lives: by breaking away I mean their abandonment of those standards of behavior and ways of life we think are properly good and proper for them – do not this with that happy, thoughtless and often arrogant optimism which is a natural mark of the young leaving the old. Our children in these times are not really happy, not thoughtless and seldom arrogant. They do not think that their parents’ old fashioned standards are not good for them. To the contrary: they feel that they themselves are not up to them […].
This is surely sad, but there are three consoling elements. The first is that things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem to us. The second is that unlike other generations in the past, they love and respect their parents deeply – precisely when these parents possess old-fashioned standards and virtues. It is therefore that we must continue to impress them with our own convictions, together with our concern and love for them (note that i write together with, not tempered by). This is why you must not worry about your «certain special vulnerability and lack of elasticity in your reactions to them». That may be indeed an asset for them – not because it is identical with the older traditions of discipline but because it will furnish them with the inner sense of a constant reminder».