"frank" wrote in message
...
Everett M. Greene wrote:
bluenosepiperflyer writes:
I stand corrected. Your statement is almost a verbatim quote of
what I find in The American Heritage Dictionary about usage of
"capital". [Isn't English a fun language!]

In our nation's capital a bunch of self-serving white-collar criminals sit
in our capitol building and **** away our capital.

You and your neighbors elected them. They were (re)elected primarily because
they "brought home the bacon". By the bucket load. Everybody got their own
little "fix".
--
Matt Barrow
Performance Homes, LLC.
Cheyenne, WY
--
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville famously concludes
with a warning of the kind of despotism democratic nations have to
fear. Tocqueville warns that the passion for equality will give
rise to a certain kind of degradation in which citizens will surrender
their freedom democratically to a tutelary power:

Above these [citizens] an immense tutelary power is
elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their
enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute,
detailed, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal
power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare
men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to
keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens
to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying
themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it
wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides
for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates
their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their
industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances;
can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of
thinking and the pain of living?

***

Subjection in small affairs manifests itself every day
and makes itself felt without distinction by all citizens.
It does not make them desperate, but it constantly thwarts
them and brings them to renounce the use of their wills.
Thus little by little, it extinguishes their spirits and
enervates their souls....