One more thing he got right......................

 

The failure of Western governments to achieve their proclaimed objectives has produced a widespread reaction against big government. . . . The reaction may prove short-lived and be followed, after a brief interval, by a resumption of the trend toward ever bigger government.  The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs—except programs that benefit other people.

-Milton & Rose Friedman, Free To Choose

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

Ostensibly, these “nuisance-protests” are carried out by distinct groups motivated by a particular cause, such as the environment, Palestine, trans-rights, or immigration. In reality, however, all are animated by the same, self-destructive ideology: neotoddlerism.

-as culled from here

Bill Maher talks.......................

 

...........worthy causes and rites of passage.

but not yet......................

U2..........................................Stories for Boys

 

     Had I been familiar with that quotation attributed to Saint Augustus when addressing the Lord—"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet"—I'd have understood it.  On these trips abroad, Guggi and I shared more than an interest in the scriptures.  We were girl mad and had made ourselves available for French-kissing experimentations by the girlfriends of older boys. Nothing to complain about, but we needed to find our own girlfriends.  In Criccieth my eyes fell on the very not mendacious Mandy, without doubt the most beautiful girl in all of Wales.  It was if she'd been swept up on the beach, dark and gorgeous in a black bikini.  I was thirteen, she was fourteen.  I so wanted to be sixteen and have her never let me go. Which she did quite easily now I think of it.

Bono, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

A question not asked very often............

 Everyone remembers the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You know, this porridge is too hot, this one is too cold, this one is just right.

Well, pain kinda works in the same way. Too much pain will lead to trauma and helplessness. Too little pain will lead to entitlement and selfishness.

But just the right amount of pain and struggle: that’s what allows us to feel a sense of accomplishment and meaning in our lives, which then builds up our sense of autonomy and self-worth—the bedrock of a mentally healthy and happy person.

So, how do you define the Goldilocks Zone of Pain? How do you know how much pain is “just right?”

-Mark Manson, from here

hegemony.........................

      One way to understand Jackson's unconventional courtship of Rachel is to see it as part of a broader personal approach by which he reckoned with the world.  Over a long public service career, he was occasionally accused of skirting legal niceties in the name of expediency.  While president he controversially removed federal deposits from the country's National Bank (thus earning a Senate censure for "assuming upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution"), and in another episode he tacitly supported southern postmasters who, in direct opposition to postal law, refused to deliver abolitionist materials.  Jackson, and indeed much of the political movement he headed, believed the country too confined by treaties and technicalities, the kind of formalities and piddling points that easterners presumably used to maintain hegemony over westerners.  In a similar vein, he believed his marriage to Rachel legal in the only sense meaningful to him, showing little concern for the lack of a contract.  In both contexts, in and out of power, he demonstrated a tendency for the intuitive, the immediate, and the practical.  This attitude no doubt reveals something about his personality and temperament, though it is almost certainly indicative as well of the frontier's mounting pressure upon older American institutions, practices, and protocols.

-David S. Brown:  The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson