A dynastic disease in American politics

[Ruthful]

It's not often that I find myself in agreement with this fat toad-much less an opinion-editorial published in the FT-but, like my good pal Mark Krikorian, I have to say that when you're right you're right.

By Grover Norquist

Published: November 20 2007 20:15 | Last updated: November 20 2007 20:15

The US was founded as a constitutional republic. There were to be no kings, dukes or other rapscallions in the New Jerusalem.

Thomas Paine spoke for all of us in Common Sense, saying there was no role for hereditary monarchy in the new world: “For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.”

America’s national constitution, written by representatives of 13 jealous states, even gives the federal government the task of guaranteeing a “republican form of government” in the states and adds: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.” The queen of Hawaii had to go.

It could not be much clearer. No aristocracy. No king. No inherited titles...

Full column at this link:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dda3edc6-9...nclick_check=1

FWIW, I think it's worth checking out the whole thing.

[ZoNeSeeK]

You need to be a member to see the whole thing, I think :/

[Ruthful]

Crap!

I knew that you had to log in to see some of their web-accessible articles, but that column was still up two days ago.

It's bad enough when these rags put their content behind a subscription wall, but what really pisses me off is when they have the full articles that disappear after a certain number of days.

Does it even occur to them that the only newspaper Web operation that turns a profit is WSJ.com? And even the Journal is going to drop that-supposedly-in the near future.