The garden is not decadent, of course. It is merely decaying. But being amid it, one can sense the temptation to decadence–that recurring human response to loss of faith–a way of taking the decay not as a transitory phase but instead as a choice and a meaning.

The frontier town may be struggling to establish justice in difficult circumstances, but we are given little hope that it is having clear success. Into the midst of these proceedings 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) comes–confident, brisk and precocious–looking for help. She intends to bring her father’s killer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), to justice or to take justice to him.

I’ve acquired a taste for meeting dragons–often quite suddenly–because I’ve learned, slowly and after long, torturous detours, that, first, dragons are a sure sign of treasure–some truth that’s new to me is close at hand–and, second, dragons are mainly bluff. They have no real power–except the power of illusion and dread.

Then the story begins–-the knight,
the dragon, the princess–-a cruel struggle,

An awareness of nothing has creeped into our schools and offices. What does it matter which building in which edge city reached by which highway one goes to through morning gridlock to ride the same elevator to the same hallway to the same room filled with purplish gray fabric-covered cubicles, personalized with photocopied jokes?

Social Security has been successful at fostering greater dependency on the government. Fewer and fewer Americans remain unafraid enough to live and speak as the independent freemen envisioned by the Founders. More and more elections are decided by fear of losing yet more money. Those who work fear taxes while those who don’t fear reduced benefits. Other issues, such as national security, get displaced by anxiety over what our own government might do.

Most Germans who cooperated with the Nazis did so out of the careerist ambitions and insecurities that are everywhere in plain sight today. They were just obeying directives, pleasing superiors, looking for promotions and raises, protecting their jobs, and trying to get through the day.

Goodness is something much larger and more important than a list of rules. Mainly, it is a vision of the world as it has been and can be, a vision of people living in all the little and big ways that support happiness. Fully realized, the vision is a vast and complex ecological order, quite beyond the comprehension of children.

Many commercial landscapes have much in common with silk and plastic flower bouquets that present an image of flowers without quite capturing the essence of flowers. The dimension of time–the unfolding, developing, blossoming, fading, drying and decaying–that inform the gardener’s vision is, as far as possible, absent, leaving an aesthetic dimension somewhat emptied of meaning. Though such plantings are alive they are somewhat not living.

If Congress wanted to take care of the first responders in New York but also adhere to the rule of law, they would have specified the criteria that needed to be met for the law to apply: responding in the line of duty, suffering harms not already provided for in existing health benefits, etc. To pass such a law, it is necessary to think through what principles we are choosing to be governed by, because once the law is passed, it will apply to everyone who meets whatever criteria the law establishes.