Dear Alex,

Thank you for your letter. My chief concern in replying to it, is not to write
anything that might disconcert or distress you.  I have never considered 
myself a conservative, but as I get older the political scene on which if
anything I would appear as a liberal, seems more and more problematic to me,
and I despair of my ability to contribute to it. Politics, as is well known,
entails compromise, but what I believe in is so remote from the common
consensus, that to participate I must betray my most fundamental beliefs.
These are: 1) Total and unconditional disarmament, 2) the abolition of prisons
and imprisonment, 3) A guaranteed income for every person, 4) the preservation 
of all open space as wildlife refuge, 5) the abolition of hunting, 6) the 
repurchase by the government of all firearms, 7) unconditionally open borders.
For me to go on with my irresponsibly irrealistic enumeration, is to waste your
time.

I interrupt to quote Samuel Johnson: “How small, of all that human hearts
endure,/ That part which laws or kings can cause or cure./ Still to ourselves
in every place consign'd,/ Our own felicity we make or find:”

I agree with you that money is power. But power is not important to me. What
I have tried to explain to my grandchildren is that the value of money
is to buy freedom, freedom from the slavery of menial and meaningless labor.
Yet our culture is so depraved that consumption has become its cardinal virtue.
The power of money to which you allude, is the power to spend, the power to
buy things and services which we do not need, which burden and oppress us.
Thus we are urged to buy and buy and buy, until we have sold ourselves into 
slavery. Henry David Thoreau where are you when we need you so badly!

Love, Jochen