"O Brave New World!" Nope, the same old craven, ignorant, superstitious old world. If anything, the march toward civilization peaked about the time the Berlin wall fell. It's been a race back to the Dark Ages between Christianity and Islam ever since. "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." -Thomas Jefferson

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken