ties that bind....................

A civilization can survive only if its members, especially those with the greatest influence, believe in its basic values.  Today our key institutions—the academy, the media, the corporate hierarchy, and even some churches—reject many of the fundamental ideals that have long defined Western culture.  Activists on both left and right, instead of emphasizing what binds a democratic society together, have focused on narrow identity politics that cannot sustain a pluralistic society. 

-Joel Kotkin, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

An idealist..........................

Power worried him: no one ever believed he possessed too much of the stuff.  His sympathies were with the man in the street, to whom he believed government answered.  A friend distilled his politics to two maxims: "Rulers should have little, the people much." And privilege should make way for genius and industry. Railing against "the odious hereditary distinction of families." 

-Stacy Schiff,  The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Fun with the language....................

 Anyone totally committed to a single pursuit almost inevitably becomes the propagandist of his own effort.  As a nation of specialists, we have become a nation obsessed with self-justification.  When we don't have it, we make it.  And we are now familiar enough with the make-work of manufacturers who need products, scholars who need projects, politicians who need issues, generals who need armies.  We speak the language of a people bent on justifying everything we do or want to do, whether it is justifiable or not.

     This preoccupation, with its consequent language of self-praise, is epidemic.  It is chronic at the highest levels of the government.  Much of the blame for the erosion of our idealism must be laid to the government, because the language of ideals has been so grossly misused by the propagandists.  The liars of policy and public relations are addicted to a rhetoric of high principle.  Our political ideals fill their mouths as unctuously, and with as little involvement of conscience or intelligence, as so many pieces of fat meat.

-Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

Leadership......................

“'Why do you suppose they made you king in the first place?'  I ask him. 'Not for your benefit, but for theirs. They meant you to devote your energies to making their lives more comfortable, and protecting them from injustice. So your job is to see that they're all right, not that you are - just as a shepherd's job, strictly speaking, is to feed his sheep, not himself.'” 

-Sir Thomas More,  Utopia

On Ideals.................................

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.

-Carl Schurz, an interesting man

On ideals..............................

To ponder interminably over the reason for one’s own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point of view, to be sheer folly. And yet everyone holds certain ideals by which he guides his aspiration and his judgment. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

-Albert Einstein, as culled  from this remarkable bit of writing

Ripples..............................

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

-Bobby Kennedy, as excerpted from his "Ripples of Hope" speech, delivered at the University of Cape Town in 1966.   Full speech is here.

Ideally.................................................

Respect for the high ideals of Wilsonians too often tempers criticism of the many costly follies of the do-gooding set.   That is a grave error.   Smarter Wilsonians would be better for the world, but they won’t get smarter unless they are held responsible for the misery their well-intentioned but ill-considered meddling too often leaves in its wake.
-as excerpted from The American Interest

The closest thing to perfection....................

..............................................that mankind is likely to ever create is the baseball diamond.  Especially when the Phillies pound the Yankees, 11-8, at Yankee Stadium II.

Constant..............................................

"Man's capacity to behave in flagrant contradiction to the ideals he pretends to profess has been constant throughout history."
-Jean-Francois Revel

Moms know stuff........................................

"I always say I am a realist, and my mom says, 'No, you just have anxiety.' " 
-Jessica Chastain

cartoon via

Camouflage..............................

"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power."
-Aldous Huxley   

A patron saint in plumb..................

"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly."  One of Chesterton's most famous lines.  One of his other most famous lines is, "If  a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."  But we should hasten to point out that he was talking about amateurs.  This line does not apply to professionals.  And he says that while every professional calling has its drudgery and details to attend to, there is an ideal connected to the calling, an ideal that one strives for or aspires to.  That is why the classic professions, such as soldiers or doctors, have patron saints who represent that ideal.  However, in our modern world, says Chesterton, it is a serious calamity that no such ideal exists for the vast number of honorable trades and crafts on which the existence of a modern city depends.  There should be, for instance, a patron saint of plumbers.  "This," says Chesterton, "would alone be a revolution, for it would force the individual craftsman to believe that there was once a perfect being who did actually plumb."
Dale Alhquist,  Common Sense 101:  Lessons From G. K. Chesterton