My point was that beliefs are the sort of ideas you're talking about, that can be more or less informed, and the belief I'm talking about is in the importance of Enlightenment itself.

I believe in freedom of choice too, and it's not even you wanting to be in the Foreign Service that bothers me. That seems good, precisely because you "could actually make a difference to US policy there," and I think you have every right to be arrogant about thinking you could be useful there. It's that somehow you seem to be saying that in order to do this you should give up caring about "big ideas" and so on. I don't see why you want to do that. And I know you keep saying it relates to your father, but I can't help thinking that we're talking about different things.