A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

Until recently issues like birth, death, welfare and marriage were all within the church’s domain. Within the past century or so authority of these issues has passed to the state. The church was reluctant to issue divorces. The state took a similar stance, denying divorces unless one spouse had significantly violated the marriage agreement. Couples determined to separate would do so by any means nessesary, which often meant perjury …or worse!

It was perjury that prompted governments to provide a straight-forward means to end a marriage without all the deceit, petty charges and arsenic. In 1970 the “no-fault divorce” law was passed. The gist of a “no-fault” divorce is that either spouse can terminate the marriage at anytime. No one needs to violate the marriage agreement and protests from the other party will not stop the proceedings.

The terms for a “no-fault” divorce differ from state-to-state. Surprisingly, New York is among the strictest states, requiring both spouses to sign a separation agreement and remain separated for a year before the proceedings can start. Could this be the reason New York has one of the lowest divorce rates in the country, significantly lower than every state in the Bible Belt? A small group began to lobby for a legal alternative that would allow couples to choose to deny themselves no-fault divorces. This new kind of marriage agreement is called a covenant marriage. The idea being that marriage would once again be a significant agreement by which a significant violation is required in order to terminate it. The most common violations are abuse, felony, adultery, abandonment, and long periods of separation. (As for the difference between abandonment and long-term separation, it is lost on me.)

• Wikipedia: no-fault divorce, covenant marriage

Last night I watched Unsolved Mysteries of World War II Volume 4. It was the only DVD in the series that did not get blasted by reviews from my fellow netflix members. The documentary was not produced very well, but the subject was interesting. Two thirds of the DVD was dedicated to exposing the Nazi party’s cultic roots and the bizarre cult-related secrets hidden in Himmler’s castle. Outside video games, it is difficult to find documentation about the Nazis efforts to create an army of uncontrollable zombies hell-bent on consuming human flesh. Although the documentary did not directly make this claim, I think the viewers got the picture.

As I was returning from the grocery store I saw a beautiful thunderstorm off in the distance. There was just enough light left in the sky to make out the outline of a huge cumulus cloud. The cloud looked flat in the twilight. Each arc of lightning within the cloud would illuminate a small portion of the cloud, giving just that portion of the cloud some depth for a moment. It was so beautiful the handful of people in the Publix parking lot set aside a few minutes to enjoy it before they went on their way.