The moral authority of our most cherished institutions comes from their voluntary nature: the value of advice from a priest, a teacher or a loved one depends in large part on the fact that we are free to ignore it. But judges' pieces of 'advice' are court orders, enforceable ultimately by the raw physical power of imprisonment. It is precisely because of the awesomely enforceable nature of our powers that we must be so circumspect in exercising them. It is one thing for a co-worker, family member, doctor, or clergyman to confront someone about a perceived drug problem; it is quite another thing for a judge to compel drug treatment. Drug courts not only fail to recognize this important institutional distinction, but their very purpose is to obliterate it.
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America loves the representation of its heroes to be not just larger than life, but stupendously, awesomely bigger than anything else. If blue whales built statues to each other they'd be smaller then these.
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Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey.
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
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