Religion & Law

This, from Front Porch Republic:

 . . .Small is beautiful not because it purposefully stunts its growth, sterilizes itself, or controls itself with an obsessive and dominating rigor that would impose a little circle of stasis on nature and in defiance of it.  The small community is desirable, not because it gives the fleece-vested among us an opportunity to savor a mochachino before heading up to Mount Rainier for the afternoon.  The small household is beautiful, not because of its unpeopled quiet, but because the crush of kids playing and squabbling, raising and getting along together is the earliest and the latest fulfillment of our political natures.  With and as children, we learn to be human; with and as the parents of children, we learn to be adults.  Those who truly see the essential value of home production, the bonds of community, the propinquity of growing and eating, of making and using in a settled place, see also that these exquisite attributes of the small and local are made possible by big families and that big families are a large part of what makes them valuable in the first place. . . .

With the caveat that no snark ought to be directed at those who know the value of good outerwear on Mt. Rainier . . . read the whole thing.