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.

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.

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.

One of the signs that often accompanies the action of a good person is that all the creeps and goons begin howling and screeching like monkeys in the trees when a jaguar passes below. . .