First Principles

“If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

– Thomas Paine

~~~

My wife has a daily baby development journal thing, and on the bottom of every page it has some quote or another about child rearing or pregnancy.  Most don’t resonate in my head until I’m forced to let it escape here.

There are times when I want to stop reading the news, quit writing, quit paying attention.  It’s a lot of extra work (and stress!) for what seems like very little gain.

But I think that trouble is here, now, in my day. Our government spends too much, and borrows more still, and eventually the bill collector will come demanding his due.  There is evil in the world ready to kill us if we give them the chance.  We can keep postponing the pain with illusory credit card prosperity instead of the real thing, and we can pretend that being nice to evil will disperse it instead of encouraging it – but these things will only make the consequences that much worse when the reckonings inevitably come.

I think that there are enough of us out there who feel the way I do about things that together, we can help solve (or at least minimize) some of those troubles in our time. I hope so.

My child may never have peace – his day will have plenty of trouble, just as all generations do.

But I can try to help relieve him of having to deal with mine.  And so I will.  Thanks to everyone all over the country willing to come along for the ride.