“Something to do with dignity, something to do with luck, something to do with grace.”
“I only drive when I want to.”
For consider what has not been destroyed: music, poetry and art; the sacred texts and the secular knowledge that derives from them; the impulse to love and to learn, which will vanish only with the human species; the still-warm habit of association and institution-building, into which all our better impulses may feed. These are the counters to despair, and the source of hope in any age. Society depends on the saints and heroes who can once again place these things before us and show us their worth. This is not a task for the politician, whose proper role is not to create a society but rather to represent it. It is a task for the educator, the priest and the ordinary citizen whose public spirit is aroused on behalf of his neighbours.
As Scruton goes on to say, the “trivializing materialists and sarcastic cynics” will always make this difficult and force all too many people into hiding. But in our best moments we accept the ridicule and don’t mind sounding ridiculous, for “the best is always mocked by that which feels condemned by it.”
I always want to add a note of caution with this sentiment, since it can so easily swing over to a heedless indifference. Be helpful always, but never assume you are helping.
Lastly, regardless of the scorn, a proper human confidence doesn’t need a movement or a following or a crowd but can “take comfort in handing on knowledge to one person.”
And I think sometimes that one person will just be yourself.
I’m fine, this is fine 
Valuing seeks to dominate the material world. The entire stuff of being becomes a mere resource to be manipulated and shaped into what we value. … No wonder, then, that valuing feels bold and arrogant in contrast to the other attitudes we have examined; a world we only value is a world entirely subject to our evaluation and control.
Respect, by contrast, responds. It eschews control. It steps back before the type of thing cared about, and thus necessarily before every individual example of that type. A limit is given to us and to our schemes of domination. We can no longer destroy and rebuild as we wish; we must accept and accommodate being, even the being of individuals. If I respect human life, if I think it inviolable, then rather than making and manipulating it, I acknowledge and defer to it; I let it be. True, I may sometimes (but not necessarily or always) have a kind of attraction to the object of respect, but even here, my feeling goes beyond the achieving and holding stance that accompanies valuing, to include an appreciative awe or delight.
– Richard Stith
This perfectly complements the Rembrandt painting this morning
“No wonder,” says Anne Kim, “that poverty sticks around. There’s simply too much demand for it.”
Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. government aggressively pursued the privatization of many government functions under the theory that businesses would compete to deliver these services more cheaply and effectively than a bunch of lazy bureaucrats. The result is a lucrative and politically powerful set of industries that are fueled by government anti-poverty programs and thus depend on poverty for their business model. These entities often take advantage of the very people they ostensibly serve. Today, government contractors run state Medicaid programs, give job training to welfare recipients, and distribute food stamps. At the same time, badly designed anti-poverty policies have spawned an ecosystem of businesses that don’t contract directly with the government but depend on taking a cut of the benefits that poor Americans receive. I call these industries “Poverty Inc.” If anyone is winning the War on Poverty, it’s them. […]
Perhaps the greatest damage that Poverty Inc. inflicts is through inertia. These industries don’t benefit from Americans rising out of poverty. They have a business interest in preserving the existing structure of the government programs that create their markets or provide their cushy contracts. The tax-prep industry, for instance, has spent millions over the past 20 years to block the IRS from offering a free tax-filing option to low-income taxpayers. The irony is that this kind of rent-seeking is exactly what policy makers thought they were preventing when they embraced privatization 40 years ago.
Rembrandt’s The Prodigal Son among the Swine, c.1650
With the greatest economy and delicacy, Rembrandt seems to have depicted the very moment when, from the depths of abjection, the possibility of forgiveness and so of hope dawns on the prodigal’s mind. On his knees, as if in prayer, he appears, hesitantly and tentatively, to entertain a thought like the psalmist’s: ‘there is forgiveness with thee’ (Psalm 130:4). We observe, perhaps, the very dawn of hope. But it is like the first signs seen by those who watch for the morning (v.6), no more than a glimmer—for hope, after all, need have no ground beyond the very barest intimation of possibility. We sense that the prodigal may rise from his knees.
Whether he will then be able to ‘stand’ (v.3) remains to be seen. From the depths, however, the prodigal, like the psalmist, has dreamt of forgiveness.
– Michael Banner
