With regard to the last two entries…
While the country may be more polarized than it’s been in my lifetime, but I don’t need to go much earlier to find far greater polarization. Riots in berkeley where the national guard was called out occurred in the 60’s. I definitely don’t need to go back to the civil war.
I still believe in Jefferson’s quote: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
I was in a dark mood earlier, to put it mildly.
that man has so many good quotes!
*whew* Your earlier post left me scratching my head; it was so un-Stephen. I don’t immediately fault the intelligence of our electorate when the election doesn’t go my way. I’m more apt to blame the media and our political institutions, who make it all but impossible to put forward candidiates worthy of my vote. Kerry was a borish, bland and uninspiring candidiate even to me, and I was naturally inclined to vote for him as the Democratic nominee. If I couldn’t think of good reasons to vote for him, other than “He’s not Bush”, I’m not surprised that 51% of the country didn’t vote for him either.
I was pretty annoyed at the election as well. Most of the people I talked to said either “I voted for Kerry, the lesser of two evils”, or “I voted for Bush, the lesser of two evils”. To me, that’s the biggest problem that needs to get fixed.
It’s too bad more good quotes don’t fit into 10-second sound bytes.
Even if the populace are the most likely to trade freedom for security and who deserve neither, to paraphrase Ben Franklin? The people and legislature usually overreach. I’m not sure I have your faith in the electorate, even though it was the same electorate, in many ways, that gave FDR 4 terms.
The 60’s broke the Dems even as they advanced the most socially progressive legislation in a hundred years.
Unfortunately I believe the courts, with a mix of liberal judges and true conservatives (who usually dislike overbearing govt) will be the ones who roll back a lot of the laws passed in the last term and this one.