Lughnasa Waning Green Corn Moon
Rigel and Vega have returned home, a bit foggy and uncertain. Spayed now, they have to be on home rest for the next 10 days. Somehow I don’t think we’ll make that.
Kate and I saw a cute poster on the bulletin board posted in the airlock going out of the Festival Grocery. Done in crayon it said, “Free kittens. Spaded.”
These lectures on the cycles of American political thought I’m listening to right now have prompted a considerable amount of noodling, most of it focused right now on the central paradox of our democracy. A solution borne of the Enlightenment, our government and in particular our Constitution and Bill of Rights makes a lot effort to protect the individual and that crucial virtue which ensures individualism, liberty.
The paradox at the core of our nation is this: government exists to co-ordinate and organize a community, yet its chief underlying value is individualism. Thus, the purpose of government, focused on community, stands over against the individual it exists to preserve. This paradox, unresolvable, lies at the fulcrum of so many of our political disagreements. I’m not any further along with this right now, but its on my mind.
