I was reading an interesting article about Gore Vidal's works in the holiday issue of the New York Review of Books where in his 'Inventing A Nation', building from Benjamin Franklin's speech at the Constitutional Convention "I agree to this Constitution with all its faults.....and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism...". Franklin's premonition was of a time where a democracy would "become too corrupt to govern themselves". Vidal argues that this Despotic Government has arrived.

However, Franklin surely was aware of the similar prophecy in Plato's Republic. And while Plato argues for the inevitable disintegration of Democracy into Despotism, it is not tied to "popular corruption" (Vidal's phrase) but instead to the 'insatiable desire' of liberty - unchecked liberty. An interesting quote from the Republic: "In a democratic country you will be told that liberty is its noblest possession..." and so "[a] democratic state may fall under the influence of unprincipled leaders, ready to minister to its thirst for liberty with too deep draughts of this heady wine".

The line of thought that Plato and Franklin/Vidal spurred me to follow was this. The seemingly disparate causes of the disintegration of democracy into despotism reflected in the quotes above are both in play today. Accordingly, "popular corruption" can be seen as a corruption of the intentions of the Founding Fathers outlined in the Federalist Papers, the Constitution etc. But his 'popular corruption' has come in the form of Ignorance. An Ignorance of the majority of Americans of the principles upon which this country was founded. In turn, it is this ignorance that has allowed the idea of unchecked liberty to be improperly placed as the cornerstone of an American identity. Plato again "In such a state the spirit of liberty is bound to go to all lengths". Ironic, but fitting, that these lengths include the USA Patriot Act and pre-emptive war.

Random cogitation inspired in part by Billy Collin's poem Marginalia :

"....A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

As well as by a library's take on Marginalia .

I must admit to often contemplating the past readers of books. As a graduate student, I would attempt to stave off cerebral marasmus by descending into the bowels of the library in search of compelling esoteria. (One of my most interesting discoveries was Monumenta Chartae Papyraceae Historiam Illustrantia- Collection of Works and Documents Illustrating the History of Paper -edited by E. J. Labarre.) On such journeys, old forgotten tomes not only revealed their authors, but in the form of marginalia, their readers - a certain lost 'social commentary' that I find particularly interesting (somwhat more interesting than say, another labyrinthine find- The Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton).

I tend to pursue these thoughts more, but for the time being the question I would like to pose is: have you ever come across any beautiful marginalia in books you have borrowed from friends or the library or adopted as lost souls? The marginalia may be beautiful due to their particular insight or contrast to the book itself, or, as in the selection from Billy Collin's poem, beautiful because it breathed the spririt of humanity.