[Tolik]

Long, but very interesting!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.)

I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention.

You are welcome to browse the list of truly exceptional articles I pinged to lately. Updated on June 3, 2009.  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

[flowerplough]

Robert A. Heinlein’s “To Sail Beyond the Sunset” (1987):

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a “warm body” democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction....

[O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.

[livius]

Excellent article! I grew up in NY and remember the Harlem riots with Mayor Lindsay out in his shirtsleeves walking around...and then the devastation we saw in Harlem the next day, where the dysfuncational proportion of the residents, stirred up by agitators, had destroyed the productive businesses of their very own community.

[NonValueAdded]

quite good, it was.

[spodefly]

BTTT

[neverdem]

I missed your ping. I found that posted it later. Thanks anyway. It’s such a sad story. I was born in LaGuardia’s creation in 1951.