“In these difficult economic times, many Americans are wary of buying items they’ll use just once or twice and then store in the garage. But for those times you really need a hedge clipper, bread maker or camping stove, there’s a social networking site called NeighborGoods.net. The site is an inventory of items users are willing to lend…”

“A conservative blog posts 2 minutes, 38 seconds of video clips of a black federal agriculture official saying she didn’t do everything she could to help a white farmer. The blogger labels it racism. Calls grow for the Obama administration to remove her. No one at the Agriculture Department or the White House checks further. The official is forced to resign. Monday ends, but not the story…”

“At 2:10 p.m. ET, Spitz issued this statement:

‘I made poorly considered remarks about Rush Limbaugh to what I believed was a private email discussion group from my personal email account. As a publicist, I realize more than anyone that is no excuse for irresponsible behavior. I apologize to anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments greatly; they do not reflect the values by which I conduct my life.’ …”

“The New York soup shop immortalized by the Seinfeld show’s “Soup Nazi” character reopened Tuesday in Midtown Manhattan after a hiatus of six years. There was a line around the block, but the soup man himself — Al Yeganeh — was unavailable. He has never been amused at his portrayal in the sitcom and the media…”

“…On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives…”

“Well, there are a whole bunch of Muslim Facebook users who aren’t too happy with the site. Apparently, it doesn’t sufficiently cater to their faith. First, it suspended four popular pages that broke its Terms of Service; second, it didn’t immediately cancel and ban some pages that promoted the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” event. If Facebook doesn’t prove it’s a good little dhimmi, they’ll leave it for a more Islamic-centric social networking site…”

“Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust…

“…Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government…

“…The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century’s Northerners and Southerners — nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, “prayed to the same God.” By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God “who created and doth sustain us,” our ruling class prays to itself as “saviors of the planet” and improvers of humanity….

“…Nowadays, the members of our ruling class admit that they do not read the laws. They don’t have to. Because modern laws are primarily grants of discretion, all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower…

“This is all about a class of Americans distinguishing itself from its inferiors. It recalls the Pharisee in the Temple: ‘Lord, I thank thee that I am not like other men…’

“In sum, our ruling class does not like the rest of America. Most of all does it dislike that so many Americans think America is substantially different from the rest of the world and like it that way…”

“…Discussing Babywise or the Preparation for Parenting series can result in conversations that range from slightly awkward to downright volatile. Dialoguing about parenting choices tends to lend itself to a posture of defensiveness for nearly all of us. How can we have peaceful, grace-filled conversations with others about a topic that is often a catalyst for divisiveness?…”

“…But Carnahan’s campaign wasn’t able to completely sell out the Folly Theater, where Obama will appear for a grassroots event on Carnahan’s behalf, at the prices they wanted. Tickets once priced at $250 are now going for $99, while $35 tickets are half off…”

“It takes a lot to spook the solid old gold market. But when it emerged last week that one or more banks had lent 380 tonnes of gold to the Bank of International Settlements in return for foreign currencies, there was widespread surprise and confusion…”

“In a mostly blue state where Democrats control the Legislature, Mr. Christie, a Republican, won election last year mostly because of the deep unpopularity of his opponent, Gov. Jon S. Corzine. Mr. Christie, a former federal prosecutor known for aggression rather than deal-making, took office to predictions that his hard-charging style would not work in the labyrinth of Trenton, where factions of party, region and interest group would slow him down.

“Instead, he confronted the powerful public employees’ unions and won, cutting future pensions and benefits, and persuaded voters to defeat hundreds of local school budgets. He got nearly everything he wanted in the state budget, making the deepest cuts in generations. And the Assembly is expected this week to give final passage to one of his cherished goals: a cap on local property taxes. …”

“A group of Iranian activists abroad and in Iran have produced a professional translation of my novel Little Brother and have released it online with the hope that it will be of interest to Iran’s online activists. I’ve written an introduction to the edition on online activism and dissidence. It was a volunteer-led project, but they paid the translator (whose identity is a not publicly disclosed at this time), and are asking for donations to help defray the cost.”

“Just to be clear: There is work for humanities doctorates (though perhaps not as many as are currently being produced), but there are fewer and fewer real jobs because of conscious policy decisions by colleges and universities. As a result, the handful of real jobs that remain are being pursued by thousands of qualified people — so many that the minority of candidates who get tenure-track positions might as well be considered the winners of a lottery…”

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

- and -

“Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”

The article linked above does a credible job of tracing these two quotes back as far as possible back into the mists of time, which become impassably opaque in this case circa 1950.

As for the ideas behind the two quotes, there is much about them that ring true. Indeed, I linked to a quote very similar to the first one late last year, except that the one that I found has a clearly documented source (I think). The time scale might be a bit too much to swallow though. (Collins points out that the time scale of 200 years was added to the quote later, which makes sense considering the contexts in which it was later used.)

The second one also has the ring of truth. The quote aptly describes the boom and bust of any civilzation, and the concurrent sources of those peaks and valleys. I would tend to suspect that this saying was crafted by whoever said it first using the example of the Hebrews of the Old Testament. Of course the curiosity of that example is that it began thousands of years ago and has persisted to the present day in one form or another, against global odds, and usually despite itself.