Words Across the Centuries
Boy were those Framers smart guys! And reading The Federalist Papers is like reading Shakespeare ... challenging, familiar, and oh, yeah, written hundreds of years ago. Which means that humans are evolving VERY slowly, if at all.

Here's a nugget:

"... of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demogogues and ending tyrants."

--Federalist No. 1 (Alexander Hamilton)
- posted by Chris @ 2:10 PM

 
What is the state-secrets privilege?
... besides a way for the Bush government to prevent the American people from finding out how badly it is screwing up (and screwing us)?

Is the United States a democratic republic, or a privately held corporation? Hard to tell, these days, from any side.

"Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean someone isn't really out to get me."

Ha
- posted by Chris @ 2:03 PM

 
More on the topic ...
I've finished Frank's "Kansas" book, and found it vastly illuminating and entertaining ... I wish there were more specifics, but hey, it's just one book.

I'm still working out how I feel about some of his points about the far right wing of the Republican party ... but I found this point very illustrative of a point on the other side:

"Democrats no longer speak to the people on the losing end of a free-market system that is becoming more brutal and arrogant by the day."

There is no real discussion going on in America today, Frank says, about the ills of free-market capitalism. (Although the system we really have, he notes, is corporate capitalism.)

Do we all agree that unrestrained markets are the best thing for our future? What I see looks more like "regulate everyone else but me" ... we all want something or someone else to change, but whoa nelly, don't ask us to change.

There is a downside to the market ... and maybe that's where I should start looking more closely for my fundamental assumption.
- posted by Chris @ 3:15 PM