On what a father hopes and fears:

One of my most deep-rooted fears is that by trying to teach my boys right from wrong, I’m teaching them to be suckers. You try to teach your child the value of hard work, the value of honestly, the need to treat people with kindness and so on, and maybe the rest of the world isn’t teaching their kids the same things. A lot of parents aren’t even in the picture for their kids, and the lessons that are getting fed into their heads are more or less the opposite of what those kids need.

So my hope is that the boys grow up strong, smart, confident, and big-hearted, and that the country is in a good shape as they enter adulthood — secure, prosperous, full of opportunity, and considering how things are going lately, still having a Constitution and rule of law. I mentioned earlier that politics is probably inherently depressing. Parenting provides a pretty good contrast. When I shift from writing duties to daddy duties late in the day, I’m shifting from a world where I can’t control much to a world where I have a lot more control and influence.

(source: Jim Geraghty on the Spot)