There's a great op-ed in the New York Times today called, "Is Hillary Clinton the New Old Al Gore?" The title itself is enough to make you enjoy it. The article touches on the inevitability factor and whether or not that is a good thing for the Democratic party. Definitely worth the read.

I'm kind of getting worried about Fred. He's not doing as well now that he actually jumped in the race. But my hopes are still up. I really don't want to have to settle for Giuliani or McCain. Oh, I don't want to think about this right now. It's giving me a headache.

My dad sent me an article this week that I found interesting and worth sharing. I don't believe that America is on the brink of self-destruction, but I have long felt that if we are reduced to insignificance, whether by nuclear attack or something else, we will have brought it on ourselves due to apathy, ignorance and God-forsaken political correctness. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from the Greeks:
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About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage"

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
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Obviously there are some stretches in Professor Olson's conclusions. Certainly more people voted for Al Gore than those living in government-subsidized housing. It's quite a myth that all rich people vote for Republicans. And clearly the author of this article has an agenda against illegal immigration. But there are still some interesting points to be made.

Again, hear me say that I am more optimistic than this. I don't enjoy living in a state of doom and gloom. However, we do have serious enemies out there with our destruction in mind. Heck, we just let one of them come into the country and traipse around in his Members Only jacket making remarkably Democrat-like speeches about our President. (He actually mentioned Hurricane Katrina. Holy Cow.)

But I do think that the state of ignorance of most Americans, fueled by a politically-motivated media with only one agenda, to give power back to the liberal Democrats, spells potential disaster for our nation. I hope that Osama sends us some more tapes, preferably as close to election day as possible, to remind our brothers and sisters of the red, white and blue that we face a greater enemy than each other. Otherwise, I believe we are definitely in danger of national fratricide.