When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

10 October 2006

WFB on electoral schadenfreude

Voting is what you do every two years—and then, mostly, repine, wondering whether democracy really does anything for you beyond giving that little throb of tactile pleasure in recording your enthusiasm for one candidate or—and this pleasure is very keen—your loathing for another candidate. That last is a vital contribution to democratic hygiene, effected by candidates who arouse every hate gland in your withered frame, thereby offering a pure draught of remedial youthful joy, and you leave the voting booth humming “John Brown's Body.”
-- William F. Buckley, Vote for Lieberman?, September 26, 2006, National Review

Related: The (surprising) history of the song John Brown's Body, which was *not* originally written about the famous abolitionist, and which of course eventually became The Battle Hymn Of The Republic ("Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!")

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