“Folly is a joy to him who has no sense” (Proverbs 5:21),

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Without a father, there is no family.

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if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God’s church” (1 Timothy 3:4–5).

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The chronological snob thinks “new” is a synonym for “better.” Today, most people think the past was primarily populated with stupid people and that this is the likely reason that most of them are now dead.

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chronological snobbery has a cure: reading old books.

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And the covenant binds the man and wife so completely it changes them and they receive new names. A woman traditionally took her husband’s name in order to show that she was bound to him; and a man was given a new title, husband—which means house-bound—hus for house, and bund for bound. And here—in the man’s new title—we see how one thing leads to another. Marriage makes shelter; it establishes a household.

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The old notion of liberty has been replaced by something called liberation. Liberty depended upon self-reliance, but liberation is cheaper; it’s nothing but a license to do as you please. But doing as you please can get expensive. That’s why liberated people depend so heavily on government largesse.

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D.I.N.K.S.—dual income, no kids. In those days you only found them in big cities. Now they’re everywhere. Since they’ve become the new normal, the name has disappeared. They used to be considered selfish. What they really are is short-sighted. They tend to think that children are the mistake that people make when they fail to plan ahead. The builders of real houses know better. They agree with every culture around the world, through all of history till five minutes or so ago, that children aren’t the result of bad planning. They are the plan.

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A husband and his wife are one flesh because they form the most basic political community, and they reflect Christ and his body, the Church.

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The fact that people expect perfect equality in the home is evidence that they really don’t think anything productive happens there.

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A cottager and his wife had a goose that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the goose must contain a great lump of gold on its inside, and in order to get the gold they killed her. Having done so, they found to their surprise that the goose differed in no respect from their other geese. The foolish pair, thus hoping to become rich all at once, deprived themselves of the gain of which they were assured day by day. The fable is usually taken as a cautionary tale about greed—and surely it is. But it is also about the foolishness of cashing in productive property. The property is the goose. The moral is plain: care for the goose.

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My main concern is that you make the acquisition of a productive property your goal.

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By the time the word is out and everyone wants something, it is too late. It doesn’t matter what it is. When everyone wants it, it is time to sell, if you’re inclined to sell, not time to buy. The time to buy is when no one is buying—which means, naturally, that the crowd is not what you want to follow.

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By the time a business idea is commonplace, the opportunity to get in is gone and the race to the bottom on profits has begun. Forget opening a coffee shop or making videogames. Everyone and his sister wants to do those things. Now, maybe you’ve got an approach no one has ever tried—fine—then you’ve got no competition. The point is, no competition is the best competition.

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What Communists are best known for producing is dependency and soul-crushing bureaucracy and untold loss of life at the hands of the state.

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Here is the truth: if you do not own productive property you work for someone who does. Ownership is freedom and wage earners are not owners. It is just that simple.

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But maybe people have it wrong; maybe meaning isn’t something you find at work; maybe meaning is something you take with you to work.

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Good people, even irreplaceable people, are replaced every day. Sometimes they’re fired precisely because they are indispensible. Indispensible people have a way of making little people who want to feel big, feel little, so they have to go. Sure that’s stupid, but sometimes stupidity wins.

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Here’s some different advice: Turn your job into a trade school. Learn things; acquire marketable skills. If you truly master a few, you will at least walk out the door someday with things you can use.

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“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

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The best way to keep your money is to not spend it. The adage: The cheapest car you’ll ever own is the one you already have holds true for just about anything you own.

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If you’re going to be thrifty, you’re going to have to be a fixer. And the first thing to fix is your frame of mind. You need to renounce the whole opportunity cost mantra people use to rationalize manual incompetence. You know how it goes: If I spend the time to learn how to fix my stuff, that will mean less time for making money at things I’m good at. Nonsense. In actual fact it will probably mean less time for surfing the Internet. If liberty is your goal, then a measure of thrift will be needed to secure it.

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Parents must be the primary beneficiaries of having children if people are going to have them. The fleecing of households has got to stop.

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You may have witnessed the following scene: a small child has a tantrum, and highly educated mommy or daddy—sometimes both at the same time—get down on their knees and try to reason with the little tyrant. While this is great for expanding a child’s vocabulary, when it comes to moral development (or just household order), it can actually be counter-productive. Sometimes the result is an insufferably precocious child who does not respect authority. I once witnessed a mother trying to reason this way with her tantrum-throwing child and in response he started spanking her. When it comes to governing a household, while love and reason are certainly important, what you really need more than anything else is justice. And while love and reason make wonderful counselors, justice depends on something else: respect. The good news is that love and reason are right at home in a justly governed household, but without justice, neither love nor reason can remain in a home for very long.

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For these reasons (and more) we have a bumper sticker that tells us to Question Authority. But let’s look at authority closely for a moment. When you examine the word do you see anything unexpected? Here’s a hint: drop the last three letters. Now what do you have? Author. Authority is born when you bring something new into the world. Here’s a thought: have you ever wondered why God is in charge? He’s the Author, that’s why—the creator of all things. And this holds true for human beings as well. The founder of a business, the founder of a school of thought, the founders of a country—as in the Founding Fathers—these people possess authority because they are authors.

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But the principle is the main thing—authority must be undivided if a household is to remain undivided.

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As with any institution, nurture and friendship are just not enough to keep a household going. Even in the best of circumstances sooner or later you’ll need justice. And when it comes to justice, nurture and friendship can actually get in the way. A judge has to separate himself from people and rise above them. Paradoxically, to do that you need to put on weight; you need gravitas. I think you know what I mean. We’ve all known people that just can’t be taken lightly. When one of these people enters a room you feel his presence, your eyes lower and so does your voice. In the high school I attended we had a vice principal charged with school discipline. Talk about gravitas—he weighed a ton. His name was Shue—Mr. Shue to you and me. No one knew his first name; he probably didn’t have one. Or maybe his mother just named him, Mister. All I know is that he was universally feared. Even teachers feared him. Now you may be thinking: How awful—no one should be feared! Really? Here is a little anecdote to show you just how wonderful it can be to fear someone. I recall an incident on a school bus at the end of the day. The bus was full and we were waiting to leave behind a long line of buses. Some of the rowdier guys in the back—tough kids, drug-users, you know the sort—were teasing and bullying kids near them. Our fat bus-driver was a lightweight. He squeaked from the front something that might be interpreted to mean, “Please, stop.” There was laughter and someone shouted, “Shut up, old man!” Other kids, nerds and such, slid down their seats and prayed for a quick ride home. They had seen this movie before and everyone knew how it ended. Then a voice from the back said, “Cool it! It’s Mr. Shue!” Mr. Shue was walking toward the bus, no hurry, just a man in a dark suit looking in our direction. You could feel the atmosphere change in the bus—the burden of dread oppressing the weak now shifted and began to weigh down the strong. When Mr. Shue stepped onto the bus and ascended the short set of stairs, he was greeted with silence. He looked us over, scanning faces. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, projecting authority effortlessly, like a fireman shooting water from a hose. Then he pointed at two boys in the back and beckoned them to follow him. Then he stepped out of the bus and walked away. The boys silently got up and went. We all watched them follow Mr. Shue into the building. If I recall correctly, Mr. Shue never looked back to see if they were coming. That’s gravitas, man. You want it.

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Essentially though, gravitas is a state of mind that is reflected in the minds of others. Unless a man first believes he is worthy of respect others will agree with him that he is not.

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Boiled down gravitas starts with, “Who needs you?” And unless you can say it and really mean it, you have no gravitas.

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Perhaps the thing that distinguishes a just man from a tyrant more than anything else is self-mastery. Tyrants manage to gain mastery over others without first mastering themselves. When this happens the people a ruler should serve become his slaves. This master/slave arrangement is somewhat misleading though, because the tyrant is also a slave. He is a slave to his appetites. And since he is never free of them, he is never truly free to serve anyone else.

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Here’s something else to consider: the constitution of your soul will be reflected in the constitution of your house.

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Where does self-mastery begin? According to the Oracle at Delphi it begins with the dictum, Know Thyself. Without self-knowledge you’ll never master your passions because you will never be able to separate yourself from them.

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The reason is that the head of a house puts people to work. You’re not trying to manipulate anyone, quite the reverse—you’re trying to serve people by giving them useful things to do, things that they can enjoy and take a wholesome pride in. And you’re trying to build them up even as you build up your household.

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There are remarkable parallels between the way classical Roman houses and traditional Chinese houses were laid out. Both shielded their occupants from prying eyes. (The exterior walls were windowless.) And both were open to the sky. At the center of each was an atrium bringing in light and air from above; and in the middle of these miniature courtyards pools were set up to collect rainwater. These spaces were functional as well as beautiful, filled with vegetables and herbs, and in the case of the Chinese house the pool even contained fish. The rooms that surrounded the atrium in both houses tended to serve a single purpose and were strongly differentiated. Members knew their places, and rooms tended to reflect the relative status of their occupants. The entrances of these houses were designed to segregate visitors (or customers) from residents. Upon entering, a person had to pass through a series of transitional spaces, each one more private than the last.

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You are the first of many layers. The role you play in conveying the meaning of life to those beneath you is inestimable. Even social science—at least in one respect—supports the wisdom of this. Believe it or not, studies demonstrate that fathers have a greater influence on the formation of our beliefs than mothers. And this is true for girls as well as boys. This means you cannot delegate the task of inculcating household piety to your wife—not because she lacks intelligence or desire—but because in the very act of delegating it you communicate something to your children. You say that piety is not important enough for a father to deal with directly.

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Finally, you must become inaccessible on a regular basis. People and things that are too accessible are taken for granted.

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Compulsory public schooling has been the state’s primary means of indoctrination for a century and a half now. Among its objectives is the undermining of household-based education. This being the case, the legal status of homeschooling (at least in the United States) is something like a miracle. Having been permitted for so long now, and with such a large number of successfully educated and productive citizens to its credit, it would be hard to outlaw it if these were the only considerations. But many people see public schooling as a means of socialization. And this is just what many homeschooling families want to prevent. By separating children from parents, and locating them in age-specific cohorts, public schoolchildren are made to overvalue the opinions of their peers and devalue the convictions of their parents. For those who find themselves in nation states that deny the right to homeschool, parents should educate their own children as antebellum America slaves did after dark. This requires a proactive approach, both to uncovering what the child is being taught and refuting curricula that undermine household solidarity. But if a household is to retain independence and self-determination, such deprogramming is absolutely essential.

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When the top swells with wealth, and the bottom swells with people, the end is near.

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Someday you will be gone, and if the only person you care about is yourself, then everything you care about will die with you.

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Often, when people don’t trust their own children, they put limits on what their heirs can do with an inheritance. One legal instrument for this goes by the counterintuitive name of, Trust. Some uses can be prohibited (trips to Vegas, for instance), while others are encouraged, (a college degree, for example). The problem with trusts is you treat your children like they’re children. If they really are too young to handle the money when you leave this world, no problem. But if we’re talking about adults, they should be free to fail. People who aren’t free to fail never truly grow up. In part the problem is a lack of wealth, not its abundance. The true wealth of a healthy household is the productive capacity of its members. If the members of your household are virtuous, then even if they lose everything, they stand a good chance of recovering their fortunes, given time. If people lack virtue though, restrictions won’t keep them in line.

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If you’ve ever said, “I don’t want to be a burden to my children” then you need to get over yourself. If you live so long, you will be a burden, if not to your children, then to the children of other people. Social Security, socialized medicine, and even your 401K merely shift the burden from people you know to people you don’t know. As I’ve said, when it comes to social insurance, economically productive people pay into it so that the funds can be redistributed to people who are not economically productive. So there you are—still a burden. It is the anonymity of the system that gives you the illusion of independence.

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It was this need for support in old age that once justified the moral strictures of the old household: honoring your parents, submitting to (and putting up with) their involvement in your affairs, and so on. But there was an important caveat: aged parents were supposed to provide the very means needed to support them in the end. When your decrepit father comes to live with you, he ought to hand over the business if he hasn’t already, and the investment real estate, not to mention the dividend yielding stock. His cost in upkeep shouldn’t be too great. Mostly he’ll need physical help.