New Reagan building - a cathedral of Big Government

        Believing in Big Government myself, I have no quarrel with the

    $818 million dollar Reagan building - housing those loathed federal

    bureaucracy workers and soon to be dedicated by President Clinton.

       How beautifully ironic ! My newspaper shows me a view of its

    enormous atrium, 10 stories and covered by a barrel vaulted ceiling

    with an acre of glass. " A watershed of tax payer waste ", complains

     Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union.

        These horrified tax payers should learn from the ancient world-

    Egypt, Greece, Rome - the significance of grandeur in architecture.

    All those monumental buildings that are still standing -like the

    great Colosseum in Rome or the Egyptian pyramids , the Parthenon in

    Athens- bind us psychologically to these once magnificent civilizations.

       One reason we don't care much anymore about ancient Carthage - a

    city of craven merchants - is that the Roman military utterly

    destroyed it. Probably most of the edifices were strictly utilitarian

    anyway -worthy of narrow minded bean counters.

        Ordinary people think differently in different dwellings. If

    you want a peasant to think like a feudal lord, house him in

    a castle. If you want an atheist to think like a priest employ him

    in a cathedral. If you want a pacifist to think like a general let

    him study the art of " peace keeping " in the Pentagon.

        Likewise the near illiterate might develop a fondness for books

    while killing time in the more elegant libraries.

        Time spent in those dreadful old prison buildings might inspire

    the young punk to be a real Wise Guy !