Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Nothing ever really changes

I've been reading Jon Meacham's terrific biography of Andrew Jackson and came upon a speech that seems precisely relevant to the current state of political discourse. It was made by Edward Livingston of New York, during a particularly vitriolic period of debate.

"The spirit of which I speak creates imaginary and magnifies real causes of complaint; arrogates to itself every virtue - denies every merit to its opponents; secretly entertains the worst designs...mounts the pulpit, and, in the name of a God of mercy and peace, preaches discord and vengeance; invokes the worst scourges of heaven, war, pestilence, and famine, as preferable alternatives to party defeat; blind, vindictive, cruel, remorseless, unprincipled, and at last frantic, it communicates its madness to friends as well as foes; respects nothing, fears nothing."

What I can't figure out is how Livingston was able to access blogs in 1830.