[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.

[Leisler]

I was driving aimlessly through the west. I noticed all these podunk towns, usually a county seat. Business closed, trailers, cheap breakfast joints and lavish public buildings. Many looking like cheap concrete Greek Temples.

Where ever you see grand, huge building and projects, there liberty does not lay. Free working people do no work for decades on stupid symbolic edifices. Slaves and serfs do. They do it because they are ordered to, or the freedoms of free commerce are so restricted that selling ones selves to the powers that be, are the only way of providing.

You show me grand buildings and works, and I will show you an omnipotent state. The life of Borgia era peasants must of been miserable.

[jrsmc]

In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace

Everybody knows that the Swiss are really descendents of the original Templar knights. After becoming too big and successful they were persecuted by the Pope and French King, fleeing to the Alps in the 12th century.

They had to keep a low profile for several hundred years which could account for the legendary Swiss penchant for secrecy and neutrality.

[OESY]

You left out incest, adultery and scandal from the Borgia resume, but you make a compelling case for electing the Clintons in 2008--as long as the 21st Century Michelangelos and Da Vincis don't become their victims, along with the rest of us.

BTW, the cuckoo clock originated in the Black Forest, probably around Furtwangen, not in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, Switzerland is the wealthiest country in Europe by a considerable margin, and has a nominal per capita GDP ranking 6th behind Luxembourg, Norway, Qatar, Iceland and Ireland. Unemployment ranges from 1.8% to 3.3%.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland

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