Shorts

You should always take a moment, especially when things are or appear volitile, to ask the following questions. 

1.  Why this?

2. Why now?

I think there are 5 pillars of fitness that one must master to become a Gentleman, let a lone a Statesman. 

1. Physical Fitness

2. Intellectual Fitness

3. Emotional Fitness

4. Spiritual Fitness

5. Financial Fitness

In his op-ed C.S. Lewis Was Too Cynical About Christmas Maier argues that consumerism doesn't necessarily corrupt Christmas. He cites C.S. Lewis, "...everyone lives by persuading everyone else to buy things." He characterizes gift giving as "blackmail". Lewis writes in Thoughts on Christmas Past asks "Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than to spend them on all this rubbish?" Maier's presents a memory of his father to counter Lewis, "...he did it for me, purely to see the joy in my face." to counter the Lewis quotes. He concludes that if love is the motive and not social convention or the discomfort of having received and not given equally then our consumerism is a net positive. Lewis railed against "The nuisance" of the third kind of Christmas, that of the the consumer. Maier misses that Lewis held the first kind of Christmas, a religious festival, and second, a holiday for merry-making and hospitality, in high regard. Both men are correct, Christmas should be focused on Christ and gifts should be given thoughtfully and with loving intent and not as an obligation or a matter of trade.

I worry that young men, maybe men more broadly, have substituted aesthetics for ethics. This merely sets a man's table but doesn't satisfy a man's hunger for guidence or leadership.