A peek over the fence
Ducks, it has been said, are placid above the water but paddle furiously beneath the surface. TPM Cafe says that the Obama campaign released false information on Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure document which were given wide play in the Drudge Report. "The story spread about Bill ultimately turned out to be false. It ended up on Drudge yesterday, where it was given heavy play for many hours, though there's no proof that it was given to Drudge by the Obama campaign. After Drudge posted it, The Observer's Politicker blog thoroughly debunked the story, pointing out that Bill's schedule proved that he'd actually given the speech the night before, on Sept. 10." The life of a political activist is one of toil. The first and necessary piece of equipment is a fine-tooth comb.
Green Mountain Politics attended a Hillary Clinton rally at Dartmouth.
And, talking yesterday to a savvy NH Democrat Wise Man who is publicly supporting another candidate over Clinton, we were struck when he said, "The only reason my guy is still in this is because of the underground civil war (his words, not ours) going on in the Party over Clinton's chances in a general election."
One of the more interesting things about party politics is that preferences of its professional apparatchiks and "activists" may not exactly match that of the general electorate, or even of its party base. Democracy is not a perfect system, especially as practiced; it is simply better than its conceivable alternatives.
The Gateway Pundit recalls Hillary Clinton's famous intention to take oil profits and put them in a government fund after discovering her recently sold blind trust fund contained stocks from BP Amoco and Exxon Mobil, not to mention FOX News and Walmart. But since it's a blind trust, she didn't know about it.
posted by wretchardthecat at 6/15/2007 05:30:00 PM
1 Comments:
Democracy is not a perfect system, especially as practiced; it is simply better than its conceivable alternatives.
Peter Hitchens - Mail on Sunday discusses "Is Democracy the same as Freedom" in which he makes the point that the intent of democracy is to provide Liberty and the Rule of Law. Under this definition most democracies are in danger of failing.
Then Alexander Tyler wrote in 1787:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy."
Socialism has been a way for an unconstrained democratic majority to vote itself benefits from a treasury filled by an outnumbered minority.
Then there is this view - The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
I think that we are near the end of that cycle - how about "selfishness to complacency"
So what do we do to make democracy relevant again?
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