The Ponderosa: Slow day: Gratuitous mockery

Death before Dhimmitude

Energy Independence

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Slow day: Gratuitous mockery

NB's Jimmy considers surgery to replace spindly legs with trout

The Ponderosa

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Slow day: Gratuitous mockery

Available from The Virginia City Trading Post . . .

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