Briefly

I got to hang out with little Isabella at dinner again tonight. She came running when she saw me and wanted me to pick her up. Then she wanted to see cat pictures and she wanted to know why I didn’t bring Lucy with me again. (She also stole a few French fries.) I know that raising healthy and happy children is the toughest job in the world — and some days can be miserable when you’re a parent — but being around kids makes me really eager to finally have some of my own.

Whenever someone speaks of “how society is organized,” he has his eyes on taking away whatever you have and “organizing” it as he sees fit. Language like this is about someone seizing control of people and their property. It’s the language of thugs, not of free people. Free people organize themselves and make voluntary arrangements with others. Top-down control is completely contrary to the rights of individuals, whether that control is being used to benefit one part of a society or another. It’s equally wrong whether the theft is in the name of big companies or a religion or the most sanctimonious of all — for the “little people.” Fighting the evil of one sort of dictatorship by advocating a different sort of dictatorship is just as evil.

I don’t see how anybody could spend a 70-degree evening under a canopy of spring leaves from massive trees — in the twilight after sunset — and not feel as though he’s communing with something in Nature that’s greater than he or she alone. I took pictures of a tree near my house at sunset and then drove home and spent the twilight in the yard with Lucy just feeling the joy of experiencing a stunning Creation as it unfolded all around me. It was another reminder that there is beauty everywhere — and that the beauty connects us to something greater than we are — if we just open our eyes and pay attention.