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No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government
programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is
the nearest thing to eternal life we\'ll ever see on this earth!
Ronald Reagan

After I wrote this sonnet there appeared to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me
resolve to say no more about this blessed one until I should be capable of writing about her in a nobler
way. -Dante on his inspiration for The Divine Comedy, after falling short of Beatrice\'s splendor in the
Vita Nuova

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are
wrong.
Ronald Reagan

CXII



Your love and pity doth the impression fill,

Which vulgar scandal stamp\'d upon my brow;

For what care I who calls me well or ill, 

So you o\'er-green my bad, my good allow?

You are my all-the-world, and I must strive

To know my shames and praises from your tongue;

None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steel\'d sense or changes right or wrong.

In so profound abysm I throw all care

Of others\' voices, that my adder\'s sense

To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:

  You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

  That all the world besides methinks are dead.

 	--William Shakespeare