procrastinating (...in a good way)

okay, okay. i should have written my ethics paper earlier. like maybe yesterday or last week or some other time that isn't right now. but i've tried to keep myself from doing homework on sundays, so i've put this off til after midnight and have been doing other things tonight instead.

meanwhile, i stumbled across an old conference talk tonight...almost thirty years old. it's called "the household of faith," by j. richard clarke. he gave this talk back in 1980, when the u.s. was going through (another) recession, so it feels like he's talking to us today at the same time.

my favorite part is when he says, "isn’t it interesting how a luxury once enjoyed soon becomes a necessity?"

as citizens of the u.s., everyone is entitled to certain rights and liberties and it's all in the constitution and that's great. but i cannot get over the greed and selfishness of a select handful of people in our wonderful country. they are not looking out for the country as a whole -- they are thinking about their next european vacation or the luxury automobile that would fit in nicely to their already-full nine-car garage. they want things that will make them happy. and can we fault them for this?

no. of course not. this is america. everyone is entitled -- even encouraged -- to want things and work to earn things and make themselves fabulously wealthy, since money buys you happiness. but at the same time...argh. there's no good way to word this at all. let's start over.

people who work harder and are better at things deserve more stuff. that's the nature of free-market capitalism, right? but is it really necessary to be making hundreds of millions of dollars a year while others are starving to death in some alleyway a few streets down from your summer villa?

i guess homeless people aren't really doing much to better their situation, so maybe i shouldn't defend them. or maybe they are. i don't know. i'm not really sure what i'm trying to say. i just think that it's interesting that people feel ENTITLED to be bailed out when things go bad.

that's it. time to write that ethics paper.