This is who I am

When I was president of the umbrella organization for the City Colleges of Chicago student governments, our activities director at Wright said that I was someone perpetually in search of a cause. ANY cause.

While wasn't even approximately true, I didn't take that as an insult. In fact, I took at as a kind of compliment. I am a Don Quixote. It's in my blood and bones and soul. Not only do I freely admit it, but I am glad that's what I am.

We live in a world in which most people are willing to embrace whatever kind of evil they're familiar with or think they can cope with if they think it can protect them from a different kind that's foreign to them or somehow less congenial. The problem with that, of course, is that it still means resigning yourself to embracing evil. I'm all for striking the best deal you can get with reality and making the best bargain you can with events. But I'm not comfortable with actually embracing evil even if it's familiar and comfortable and expedient. I have too much of it in my own heart and soul, and I don't like it very much.

We need Don Quixotes. We need people to "dream the impossible dream." Windmills produce renewable energy these days, but they serve an even more important function by being things to tilt at. So I agree with John Adams when he said that no matter how small a minority you might be in, a vote cast according to one's conscience is the only kind of vote that is NOT wasted. I'm glad I voted for McMullin last year, I'm glad that I've stopped trying to shoe-horn myself into one of the hive minds we call political parties in America, and I'm glad to insist on the Faith Once Delivered no matter what the vapid, shallow and fashionable majority of people in our society might say about it these days. That is who I am. That is who God put me on this Earth to be.

So hand me my lance, Sancho. There's a wind farm south of Ames that has gone unmolested for far too long.