A Day in the Life of Chaos

Civil Service is such an innocuous term.  It sounds like it could represent a myriad of different things none of them having anything to to do with being an anonymous government employee.  In reality it is a time honored term to represent those that give their lives and careers to government in a belief that it has a role to play in society.  These days the very guardians of our Civil Service seem neither civil nor dedicated toward service.  Instead of dignity and courtesy we are treated to a barrage of indignity and down right insolence.  Esteemed former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "The central conservative truth about politics is that it is culture not politics that determines the fate of society.  The central liberal truth is that politics can help change a culture and save it from itself." While Senator Moynihan does a brilliant job of phrasing the philosophical clash of ideals between liberals and conservatives at its heart is an underpaid and often

I think the true measure of a man or of a woman for that matter is what they do with the entirety of their life.  No snapshot in time is good enough.  Only looking back at what they did, how they gave, how they treated others is it truly possible to pass judgement. As sparks fly in American presidential politics I think it is important to look back at our past presidents within living memory and consider what kind of men they were.  I think if anything is a true measure of the person it occurs in the post presidential years.  These are the years when these men whom reached the pinnacle of their own egos and power have to find a new voice and a new role.  They have spent their lives climbing in office and suddenly they can go no further.  They reached the zenith of ambition. I am not ashamed in the least at my liberal leanings and perhaps the error of my entire premise is that I approach it from a liberal perspective.  Liberals tend to focus on the we not the me and on humanity as a

Every generation says this:  "People today just have no idea about the way it was."  Life experience and the world around us contributes so much to what we are and what we will be.  Every generation had it's flash point and it is usually a violent one.  For my grandparents it was World War II.  For my parents it was Vietnam.  For those born after 1980 it was and will be, the World Trade Center, Iraq and Afghanistan.  For myself it was the Cold War and a little group of countries a third of the way around the world that most people have never heard of. When I was growing up international politics and perspective was divided into two camps, us versus them.  Everything was defined as Western Democracy facing off against Russian and Chinese Communism.  Today if you ask most people what Communism means it tends to be defined in the abstract.  It gets lumped together with skewed ideas of socialism and is simply presented as a fear word without true definition. Yet for m