Uprooting the evil in the fields that we know

The Spousal Unit used to work for a social justice organization which shall remain nameless in New England. It was not unusual, depending on the news headlines, for people to call her up and scream "What are you going to do about Burma?" Or Bosnia. Or wherever the latest crisis was.

To my discredit, I found this to be hilarious. I mean no disrespect to anyone anywhere and don't mean to minimize global problems. But some people apparently believed that one could pull out pixie dust from some orifice and blow it halfway around the world and make everything OK.

We all have a limited reach and range of things which we can affect. That range will vary from time to time and situation to situation. Sometimes it might reach very far. But, as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus observed long ago, some things are within our control and others aren't. It makes more sense to me to focus on the things over which we have a degree of control.

(Did you guys notice the elegant way I avoided ending that sentence with a preposition? A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.)

We can't do it all, but we probably can do some. Which leads to the last in a series of practical insights about working for social justice from The Lord of the Rings. As Aragorn, who knew a thing or two about a thing or two, put it,

...it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

That's a pretty tall order as it is.

FIVE REASONS CONGRESSMAN RYAN'S BUDGET PROPOSALS ARE NOT COOL: this, this, this, this, and this.

MAKE THAT six.

THE BUTCHER'S BILL. Here's what gutting Medicare and Medicaid would mean for West Virginia.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, jobless claims dropped again.

YES, VIRGINA, THERE IS A class struggle.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED