A Special Saint's Day

Today is the anniversary of my brother's death. His "Saints Day" for those of us with some High Church Anglican sensibilities. 

As with the rest of my "normie" family, he loved me anyway. :-) 

He was a decent, principled conservative Republican and Roman Catholic. He was traditionalist enough to oppose gay marriage (as well as other social experimentation) yet humane enough to host gay couples who were friends at the family dinner table. 

He was no ideologue.

And from the days of his young adulthood as a volunteer fireman to his retirement service as President of the gated community in which he lived (dedicated, I used to say, to keeping people like me out :-) ), he understood the role civic duty plays in the maintenance of a democracy.

As one historian said, in ancient times the moral health of a people was dependent on the moral health of the sovereign.

But in a modern democracy, the people are sovereign and therefore it is THEIR moral health that is decisive.

And there always seems to be too few like him in the world - though, perhaps, more than one might expect unless one makes a point of looking for them.