Common Pitfalls in the US Business Approval Process

So, inconvenience is a third principle (along with hypocrisy, presumably). We are too quick to give up the human touch for convenience. Efficiency is typically inhumane, if not plain antihuman. A handwritten note takes longer to compose and send than an email or text message, but don't tell me it's any less meaningful. I'd rather visit three distinct stores, each owned by someone who specializes in what they sell and is familiar with my preferences, than a single superstore. Box stores, national chains, global brands, and Amazon all leave me as numb as most popular entertainment, for the same reasons. I desire more variety, creativity, eccentricity, and personality in my life, which implies less efficiency.Inconvenience is crucial because convenience involves cutting corners, and it is in those corners that we find the flaws and quirks that distinguish people from machines. Sanding the rough edges of life removes much of its meaning. We discover the meaning of life through unexpected experiences with the world and the people around us, rather than as a rational process of understanding. An ATM may be (marginally) faster than a bank teller, but it cannot smile or tell you something you hadn't considered before. It will not be a meaningful interaction.That leads to another principle: I believe that creation is imbued with purpose, even if the ultimate meaning is beyond our grasp. The darkest tragedy contains deep comedy, while the comic relief conceals deep sadness. Shakespeare recognized the possibility

or perhaps the unavoidabilit of such a 

tragical-comical-historical-pastoral" existence, which is both delightful and perplexing. Virgil wrote, "Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt," which Cecil Day-Lewis translated as, "Tears in the nature of things, hearts touched by human transience."But, as I previously stated, I believe we are here for a cause, and that, as St. John Henry Newman understood, "God has created me to do Him some definite service." He has committed some work to me but not to another. I have a mission. I may not know it in this life, but I'll be told in the next. "He did not create me for nothing." Or, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." Everything will be revealed, not in time, but in the world beyond it.Philosophically speaking, I am not philosophical. At least not as the word has been distorted by intellectual speculators during the last four centuries. If Aristotle, Plato, Avicenna, or Aquinas did not say it, it is most likely not worth stating. Since the Middle Ages, philosophers have primarily caused trouble. Bentham and Mill's utilitarianism, Locke and Bacon's empirical proto-liberalism and scientism, and Hegel and Marx's teleological presupposition have all been self-fulfilling prophecies of mass murder, misery, and environmental catastrophe. I'm not sure if this can be reduced to a principle, but Dr Johnson's vehement rejection of Bishop Berkeley's "ingenious sophistry" is an excellent example of what I mean. I'm a Johnsonian. I prefer the harsh feel of reality over the fluid smoothness of academic abstraction.

I feel poetry conveys life more 

effectively than prose. And, while I'm not convinced by Shelley's argument that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" (or anything else that annoying man-child said), if it were true, the poor quality of modern poetry would explain the dreadful situation of modern law. I believe that in order to prepare our children for life, we must teach them more beautiful poetry, and that this should be done "by heart." We remember very little of what we study in school, but what we learn by heart stays with us.I believe that our forefathers, with certain adjustments for cultural taste and the everyday cruelty of the pre-modern world, were as intelligent and sensitive as we are. If you believe you understand the human condition better than Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Moliere, Heloise, Austen, Duns Scotus, St Hilda, St Francis, St Dominic, Zhuangzi, Mencius, Averroes, or Maimonides, I don't know how to explain to you that you are completely mistaken. That is not to say they were always correct, but they were no more incorrect than we will be.More broadly, I agree with Richard Weaver that ideas have consequences, but I believe that few ideas actually reach common consciousness. The majority of them are negative. Luther, Locke, Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Gramsci—the history of modern ideas with real-world repercussions has been one of devastation and disillusionment. However, I believe that, despite the best efforts of the ideas merchants, ideas are not more essential than the buried folkways, cultural memories, half-remembered religions, and vast intergenerational histories that run under the intellectual currents of the time.

I believe that the social and political 

crises we are experiencing are symptoms of a deeper spiritual crisis, as have most crises throughout human history. We shall not solve them by searching for other planets to despoil or retreating to virtual fantasy worlds. We cannot seek physical answers for spiritual concerns. We must gain a clearer understanding of the Enlightenment's profound spiritual breach between the human intellect and nature. Until we re-align our lives with the rhythms of nature that nurtured our humanity and our souls with the natural law of which they are a part, we will continue to feel out of place and out of sorts, fighting with ourselves and each other to reclaim something we no longer remember having lost.Related to this, I believe in the objective existence of evil and original sin, and I don't think you can effectively explain human history without them or something similar. To combat evil, which is always and everywhere present, we must instill its polar opposites—truth, beauty, and goodness. We can accomplish this by cultivating "love, wisdom, discipline, and stillness amid the roaring of the Machine." These virtues exist before and beyond politics, but we should utilize political power to advance them wherever possible. More broadly, the concept that politics should be stripped of moral substance is not only foolish, but also impossible. A conservative who is unwilling to use governmental power to promote virtue and discourage evil is simply playing at politics—or conservatism.