Taking a Break from Politics

18th Century London Coffee House

18th Century London Coffee House

What with all the discouraging political news (especially the GOP filibustering gun background checks), end-of-semester craziness, and illness in my family, I find myself turning inward. I promise to start looking again at newspapers next week and finding literature that will help us guide our way through it. In the meantime, I take guidance from Mr. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer for why he has left politics:

There was a time, indeed, I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day grow more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself.

Yes, I know that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. But I’m not yet like the newspaper reader in the Henry Fielding play (I can’t remember which one) who thinks that the fate of the world depends upon his reading about it. Spending all his time in coffee houses to read the latest events, he can’t be bothered by reports that his wife has run off with another man and that his personal finances are falling apart. After all, there are momentous things going on in Parliament and on the continent that require his attention.

I have no time to be angry at the moment. I suspect the government won’t notice.

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