Whoa

Life's been a little crazy lately and it's all I can do to stay in the loop. We just had our first child, actually.

My wife bought a book for the occasion, one that you can put things in like footprints, photos, and newspaper headlines. That last one just about stopped me cold.

When I was born, Skylab was falling. Iran was revolting. The economy was in tatters. Global cooling was going to freeze us all to death. The Doomsday clock was just shy of midnight.

Well, how little things change. NASA has been castrated, the former space pioneer now relegated to supporting dogmatic pseudo-science and making a group of people who have not made a significant scientific advance since the Dark Ages feel good about their contributions to science*. Iran is still revolting, just back the other way while the world once again forgets about the plight of the people there. The economy is in tatters again, and like last time, the government is largely to blame. Global warming is supposedly going to drown us all and to stop it, we are supposed to use toxic lightbulbs with cold, soulless light and drive cars with toxic battery packs made in a nation that promises war with us. The Doomsday clock will soon be on our minds again as Russia gets harder line in the hands of her old puppeteers and Iran gets the bomb... and as the nation that sells us toxic battery packs gets more restless as the world economy continues to fall.

Why did my wife and I bring a child into this? The same reason my parents did. It's always hopeless. Life is always hell. Still, I became not some helpless victim of the world, but a man of principle who fights to keep what's good intact. I have not been bought, I have never bowed, and nobody tells me what to do. I use this freedom to make the world better through my kindness and my opposition to tyranny. This is what I hope my son does as well. I will teach him as I was taught: to tell the truth always, even when it hurts. To do the right thing, even when it means you get nailed to the wall. To protect those who can't protect themselves. To be kind to all and to help people in trouble. To reject the bait that the material world waves in front of us and to instead pursue the unchanging wisdom of times past. To build instead of destroying. To conserve instead of consuming. To remember the past and remind those too stupid to study it of what the future will be. ...and most of all, to oppose tyranny of all kinds wherever it rises regardless of the cost.

Some will say I have a hero complex and that I doom my son to the same... whatever. I have made a small difference already. I will try to make a bigger one. I hope he makes a bigger one still.