"We seem to lack the ability to shame ourselves..."

My father was a rational, compassionate man. His were simple convictions. He never wavered. He had his faith, he had his career, and he had his friends and family. He was rich even while being up to his eyeballs in debt. I can still see him sitting at the dining room table with the old-school adding machine…the kind that spits out paper….trying to make sense of what was coming in versus what was going out. Somehow he always kept the heat on, even if he had to go down into the basement himself and bang on the pipes with a big wrench.