Not Just Self-restraint, That Old Killjoy, But

Let Us Have The Candor To Acknowledge That What We Call "the Economy" Or "the Free Market" Is Less And Less Distinguishable From Warfare.

We Need Better Government, No Doubt About It. But We Also Need Better Minds, Better Friendships, Better Marriages, Better Communities.

If We Represent Knowledge As A Tree, We Know That Things That Are Divided Are Yet Connected. We Know That To Observe The Divisions And Ignore The Connections Is To Destroy The Tree.

In Kentucky, We're Destroying Mountains, Including Their Soils And Forests, In Order To Get At The Coal. In Other Words, We're Destroying A Permanent Value In Order To Get At An Almost Inconceivably Transient Value. That Coal Has A Value Only If And When It Is Burnt. And After It Is Burnt, It Is A Pollutant And A Waste-a Burden.

We Had Entered An Era Of Limitlessness, Or The Illusion Thereof, And This In Itself Is A Sort Of Wonder. My Grandfather Lived A Life Of Limits, Both Suffered And Strictly Observed, In A World Of Limits. I Learned Much Of That World From Him And Others, And Then I Changed; I Entered The World Of Labor-saving Machines And Of Limitless Cheap Fossil Fuel. It Would Take Me Years Of Reading, Thought, And Experience To Learn Again That In This World Limits Are Not Only Inescapable But Indispensable.