"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
There were some very, very sound reasons the Founders designed the Constitution to define a timocratic republic, and very,very sound reasons they eschewed mob rule (democracy).
And there are some very, very shrewd–and really stupid–reasons why our political masters have sold the sheeple a bill of goods concerning democracy.
Chew on those two thoughts for a while and get back to me, ‘K?
From around Elk River, here in America’s Third World County:
About 6 miles south-southeast of twc central.
Now, I’ve canoed under that bridge with the river at normal levels, and the underside was ~20′ overhead. Water’s sure stacking up downstream as the water’s fed into the river upstream at a continuous pace of “pretty darned fast”.
BTW, there’s a pretty good drop off from where you can see that lil stand of electric poles and transformers on down to the usual river bed and a pretty good lil stretch of bottom land there. The pic was taken from a side road that MODOT has now listed as closed.
Luckily, our lil “crick” about 300′ back of twc central isn’t really rising nearly as fast or as much as the creek further downstream that it’s feeding (and which itself feeds,way on down, into Elk River), but if things keep going, we might just see some water approach our back door. Hope not. Be a mess to clean up.
Just barely south of where Lovely Daughter lives, in Benton County, AR, this roadside park just east of Highway 71:
You can’t tell from the pic, but the water’s flowing pretty strongly through there.
Here’re some shots from a town about 12 miles south-southwest of twc central. The first features a two-story building on a campground on a slight rise from Elk River. The second is a little later and of the highway from which the roof of the building in the first photo can be looked directly across to:
…and by better folks than I–and said better, to boot–but it bears repeating: Governments exist to pay* government employees**. Period. All the rest is just fiddly bits.
*The “pay” for some is primarily in an ability to exercise illegitimate power over the lives of citizens, hence millionaires running for Congress. Their congressional pay and benefits may be minuscule compared with their already existent wealth; it’s the perquisites, honorifics and exercise of personal power that appeals to all too many of these scum.
**Note that I did NOT say “government workers” as such a class is relatively small in any government. In our fedgov, for example, line troops and much of the support staff in the military are workers. Staff pukes are quite often a drain on whatever military mission exists. Congresscritters and their staffs are fegov employees, all, and almost all of them are worthless as workers whose efforts actually benefit the country as a whole. Indeed, were they to continue to be paid with the requirement that they do absolutely NOTHING, the benefit to society would be immense.
My Wonder Woman has the day off today (and maybe tomorrow, given the flooding here in America’s Third World County) and has spent it mostly on getting ahead in a grad class. Still, she took a break a bit ago, and flipped through channels to see if there was anything worth watching on daytime TV. No luck, but while she was flipping through, she paused briefly on an infomercial about some flootzy brand of hair care products. All I heard was the B-rank celeb proclaiming that the “creator”/marketer of the stuff is,
“[P]assionate about giving everyone beautiful hair…”
Really? How about this guy?
No? I didn’t think so.
Was watching an episode (number 1 of only 2) of the short-lived and now history Paul Reiser Show when a commercial for audible.com provided welcome relief. Unfortunately, the relief was very short-lived too. *sigh* The commercial touted audible.com as a way to catch up on one’s reading.
Roll that around in your head for a bit. Some bubbleheaded blonde sitting at her ease on a patio supposedly listening to a recorded “book” as a model for catching up on one’s reading!
If you are behind on your reading, the solution is to pick up a book on your reading list (you do have a reading list, don’t you? Hmmm?) and READ it.
*sheesh*
Note: while listening to someone else read a book pretty much bores me to tears, I can see its value for some folks, but representing that sort of thing as “catching up on one’s reading” is just stupid. For one thing, even assuming a rather slow rate of reading speed, how many people can listen at 500-700 words per minute? Heck, it would seem to me that listening to someone else read a book would result in falling behind on one’s total consumption of books in whatever form, quite apart from the fact that listening ain’t reading!
BTW, after about 10 minutes, I couldn’t take any more of the Paul Reiser Show. NBC did the right thing to kill it early. Just not early enough, IMO. Killing it before airing would have suited it better.
So, my wife’s family are all from Norway–grandparents were LEGAL immigrants in early 20th Century. OK, nothing weird there. After all, they weren’t Swedish or anything. *heh*
But… Windows Update had an optional update suggested for this lil toy computer that I use sitting here beside her: the Norwegian Language Pack.
Kinda creeps me out. How does M$ know these things?
*heh*
Nothing much, just another now less useful word, the product of subliterate morons (usually in the Hivemind and Academia–people with NO excuse for misusing words, since, after all, words are their trade) misusing it so often:
decimate
Look at the word. Really look. “Deci-” is a prefix we’re all familiar with (well, all the folks who read here, meaning at least literate enough to read their way out of a paper bag). From the Latin, “decimus,” which means (roughly) “a tenth part”. Yep, until subliterate morons began debasing the word, “decimate” meant to punish (by death) a tenth of a group of people. It came into being as a punishment for a century of Roman soldiers whenever any of their group deserted in battle: any ONE soldier fled the field (or tried to) and 1/10 of the soldiers of that century were selected by lot for execution.
Decimation was a terrible punishment and a strong pressure on the group to make sure ALL soldiers stuck to the line of battle.
“Decimate” as it has come to be used as a result of influence by dumbasses no longer has that useful meaning of a destruction of a tenth of a population but means only the destruction of some meaninglessly general and unknown number. “Decimated” as used by even more massively stupid people is sometimes used in the construction, “utterly decimated” to mean “completely destroyed”.
These “people” make me want to puke. Yes, I meant “people” as a sneer.
…would think that only half the human race was up to no good.
And only an idiot would think that less than 90% of Congress was up to anything BUT “no good”.
Just sayin’.
This:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p8-I3UTLD8
With all that’s facing this society, this is something to be selling? Decorated menstrual pads?
…and the lemmings* swarm as one over a cliff…
*Yeh, yeh, I know they don’t really, but shepple seem to.
“Margaret Sanger” (played by a concerned citizen, SS) explains that “No planned or wanted trees were injured during the filming of this very important message.”
(Of course, having watched the thing, you already knew that, hmmm? ;-))
In related news, Charles Manson gave his first interview in 20 years… to talk about anthropogenic global warming. He’s one of the saner voices in the cult.