"He Mourns for the Change That Has Come Upon Him and His Beloved and Longs for the End of the World"

That is the title of today's poem. The poem itself is enigmatic, which is why, I suppose, the title is so descriptive. Yeats seemed particularly affronted by the fact that beauty fades with age. There are also lots of poems about the loss of love that comes with time. Bright, happy stuff. Even a poem entitled "The Coming of Wisdom With Time" ends thus: "Now I may wither into the truth."
That is as good a segue as any to take us back into our discussion of justice and Ron Paul. Let's pretend we're C.S. Lewis and use a metaphor, shall we? We went to the Children's Museum this morning. In the Tot Spot there is a small, wooden, kid-sized car that will comfortably seat 4 toddlers. Generally, things go pretty smoothly when it comes to taking turns because there are numerous fun activities in the car room that don't necessitate sitting in the car. Today, however, there was a little girl (who was technically too old to be in the Tot Spot, but had come in with younger siblings) who had taken the car hostage. Harper wisely assessed the situation and came over to me and mentioned quietly that she would like a turn in the car. I redirected her to another activity to give the girl's mom a chance to notice what was going on. Another 15 minutes passed and the girl still hadn't budged and neither had the 3 kids she was allowing to be on the car with her. Her mom didn't seem to be paying attention. Harper and her friend Joseph both wanted to play on the car now. I said, with a voice slightly louder than I would use normally, "Yes, it IS time to take turns with the car now, ISN'T IT?" Still nothing. Another little boy got brave and tried to climb in over the back seat and the Despotic Girl started to push him. I leaned down and said in a low voice, "You will not push. It is time to share." At this point her mom finally saw what was going on and came over and forcibly removed her and her younger sister from the car. Harper and Joseph and a couple of other kids who'd been patiently waiting finally got to play in the car for a few minutes until the Sisters Aggressive came back to reclaim their territory while their mom was distracted tending to their younger siblings. We left.

Ron Paul believes in non-intervention as a means of foreign policy. No preemptive strikes, no nation building, no propping up of fledgling democracies, no entanglements in internecine struggle. If we will just mind our own business, the rest of the world will leave us alone. Here is the problem with that, as I see it. What about the world leaders who act like despotic children? Do we leave them to their wooden cars and walk away? What if their wooden cars have a trunk full of enriched uranium? What if their mommy (let's call her the U.N. just to be cute) is too busy tending to the other children to notice? What if they were never even supposed to be allowed to play in the wooden car in the first place? What if they don't listen when another mommy (let's call her Diplomacy, just to be cute) tries to talk sense into them? It's like I wrote on my book club blog about Jane Austen's world the other day: she writes about the world as it should be, rather than as it actually is. I WISH it were the case that non-intervention would work. I just don't have that much faith in mankind. I'm honestly not sure what the answer IS when it comes to this issue, I just think I know what it IS NOT.