The 100th Post!! Hurray!

Well, although the media coverage of this event has been a little less than expected, Mosings on Life has reached an important milestone: the 100th post. Mind you, that's not as good as the 200th, so we'll keep going. ;) It's been about ten months since this blog was founded, and I think I've managed to shed some light on the political scene; or at least make it comprehensible to the layman. My mission was always to make current and political events easy to understand and fun, and I hope I've succeeded.

Speaking of political events, the race for the nominations on either party has reached that rather annoying stage of tedium that makes it boring. Both parties have all but selected their nominee: they must now meet the voters. I'll admit, an McCain vs. Obama showdown was NOT what I expected at the beginning of the race. In fact, I don't think anyone expected it. However, now we have it.

You may wonder why I'm so quick to dismiss Clinton. Some people, myself included on several occasions, have considered her to be locked in for the nomination at various points during the campaign. However, Obama's EIGHT STRAIGHT wins since Super Tuesday have made me eat my words. I make this prediction cautiously, because it is entirely possible that the Clintonator could win either Ohio or Texas, thus giving a shot of life to her ailing campaign, but I seriously doubt it. Since McCain, who is, let's face it, an improbably vanity candidate on an improbable vanity run. I really have NO IDEA how he came to be the nominee. NONE AT ALL. He's completely unappealing. And since he has NO chance against the Obama machine, you better start reconciling yourselves to Barack Hussein Obama, the 43rd President of these United States. Oh, boy.

What else? I think my upcoming research paper deserves a little space. My topic, at the moment, is the Athenian democracy/republic and specifically its' influence on our republic/democracy. To that end, I have attained quite a few rather thick books on the subject, most on a trip our class took to the McIntyre Library on the UW-Eau Claire campus. For the record, that place was AWESOME. Anywhere with books is good for me, but five floors of them? Heaven on earth. What else? I failed my driving test, unfortunately, but I've rescheduled. I made several stupid mistakes, the chief one being (in my view) taking the test somewhere where I had not only NOT driven before, but never BEEN before. Needless to say, I learned my lesson. I rescheduled in Menomonie, where I have not only driven but where I took my Driver's Ed class instruction and behind-the-wheel.

I had an interesting experience while on an early fact-finding mission on the internet, with a quote about Democracy. I give it to you here as it is most generally seen:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapse over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the worlds greatest civilization has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this 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 again to bondage."

I won't even begin to tell you how much trouble this quote has given me, and I still don't know where it came from. It was attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, a Scottish nobleman and historian, who said it (reportedly) shortly after the American War for Independence. This seems to be disproved by many scholarly sources, including a Q & A session at Edinburgh University, where Tytler was a professor. The quote, however, remains unexplained, but dates back to the fifties at least, when an obscure person named, "R.F.K." wrote in to the New York Times Book Review asking about its origins. They were unable to answer, and neither am I. But it's a great quote, don't you think?