Articles by David Roberts

A Wendell Berry poem for Wednesday

We Who Prayed and Wept

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

-----

from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Reflections on my interview with Al Gore

Damn 20 minutes goes by quick.

Update [2006-5-3 10:9:58 by David Roberts]: Especially when you blow your first five minutes discussing your shared Tennessee roots.

Vote!

Have you voted for us in the Webby Awards yet? NO?!?

Well then. Quit whatever you're doing immediately, go register, and vote. You want those National Geographic clowns getting big heads? I didn't think so.

Sex and taxes

Discussion of taxes in this country rarely gets beyond "higher vs. lower" screeching. We desperately need smarter tax talk: rational discussion of what we want as a society, what we don't want, and how best to allocate our resources. To get there, we have to get people interested in taxes -- remind them that the government works for them, and they should pay attention to what they're funding.

I have no idea how to bring about that state of affairs. But I suppose you could do worse than equating taxes and sex.