Happy Birthday Voltaire!

It’s the 317th birthday of Voltaire, one of my favorite people in history. I loved Candide, the work for which he’s best known today, but I admire him even more for his free-minded political philosophy, exemplified by this pithy remark: “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”

I invite you to contemplate the state of the world for a moment and realize how true this is.