1. On Tuesday night I woke up with something stuck in my eye, something that seemingly refused to be extricated. It got so bad that I called off work to go to the emergency room. There I learned that whatever it was was gone, but had left a large scratch on my cornea which felt like something was still stuck in there. So I got some drops and went home to heal. Next morning my eye was red, swollen, and discharging gunk, so I called in again and headed back to the ER, where they confirmed I’d developed Pink Eye.

Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to work on Monday, but in the meantime I’m homebound for the next few days.

2. On the positive side, I get to wear a pirate-like eyepatch. And I’ve discovered that the ‘cover one eye so that it can see in the dark’ trick really does work.

3. If you read FDR’s campaign speeches from 1932, he campaigned against excessive government spending and too many federal programs.

“I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues in this campaign.”
-Address at Pittsburg, 10/19/1932

“I accuse the present Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peacetime in all American history — one which piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs or reduced earning power of the people. Bureaus and bureaucrats have been retained at the expense of the taxpayer. We are spending altogether too much money for government services which are neither practical nor necessary. In addition to this, we are attempting too many functions and we need a simplification of what the Federal government is giving the people.”
-Address at Sioux City, Iowa, 9/29/1932

Then, of course once in office he created more spending and more federal programs than any president in history, specifically telling Congress not to worry whether they were Constitutional or not.

How quickly these things are forgot.

4. Something crucial to get clear is that there is no such thing as unity as such. Unity can only be in relation to something else: unity around something or on behalf of something. Unity is a consequence of loyalty.

So, when people call for more ‘unity’, the question is always ‘unity around what or on behalf of what’?

5. The above is why Christ says that He is come to “set father against son and son against father.” Because loyalty to God is the only loyalty that a man can never be absolved from. It is the relation that trumps all others.

This is a hierarchy, not a competition. The authorities all down the line ought to act in harmony: from God to the Saints to the Church to the Crown to the Nobles to the Master to the Father, all the way down to the boy leading his dog. But if any of those authorities go against God, then we are to choose God.

Hierarchy does not reject, it prefers, as Don Colacho put it.

6. One of my personal points of irritation is seeing the Medieval World reduced to the ‘before’ picture of modernity.

7.
I once found a bundle of purses,
Each filled with horrible verses
Rhymes and rhythm so dire
They belonged in the fire,
Whence I sent them with many strong curses