A win or lose

Have we won or lost the war on poverty? Lyndon Johnson’s administration aimed for "maximum feasible participation." Today the top 1% of Americans represent 25 % of our country’s income. Have we maximized participation in the the ‘American dream’ or not? Accumulating wealth can be addictive like a drug. Can we similarly win the war on drugs? Does drug abuse (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, pain killers, etc,) really make human life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short ( to use Hobbes’s words) and incompatible with freedom and civil society? Freedom to make good choices may create wealth; freedom to make bad choices might destroys lives. Expressions of liberty in a free society, however, are the only great enablers. Pondering that, enjoy a lovely poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

THE COW

The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might
To eat with apple tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
The pleasant light of day;

And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,
She walks among the meadow grass
And eats the meadow flowers.