Middle Border Country

"Many signs mark the middle border country, a frontier nation not a hundred years old, with no connected primitive past, no deep historic shadow, no feudal fumbling of dark gestation. A swift action has taken place, recorded from the first day in diaries, newspapers, pamphlets, in a mass impulse for expression scarcely equaled, except perhaps in the Soviet Union. Expression grew like corn. Newspapers sprang up like whiskey stills. Democratic man wished not to die, but to be perpetuated, to speak in meeting, to write to the papers.

It was a new society, unique, set down green in the wilderness, adapting rapidly to climate, animals, minerals, mutually safeguarding new institutions, sharing prohibitions and extensions of freedom, rearing a new culture from the blend of diverse strands of one idea: that the dignity of man is inalienable, and that by his own effort on this earth he can subjugate nature for the good of all."

Meridel Le Sueur
from The North Star


About the picture: Robert M. La Follette, Sr., campaigning in Cumberland, Wisconsin in 1897. La Follette led the reform faction in Wisconsin's Republican party and in 1900, he was elected governor. Under his leadership, Wisconsin became an outstanding example of progressive government.

See more historic Wisconsin photos.

Color Consultants For Hire

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OTBL Adopts Revolutionary Look

By now you’ve probably noticed our new look for the
new year. But never fear, ontheborderline will continue
it’s tradition of posting character assassinating junk
as it has since it’s inception.
Inspired by the auto erotic nocturnal imaginings of one
of our Dr.s of Liberty, our new design (borrowed from
the 1776 clipart emporium) will surely inspire the same
American revolutionary fruitcake zeal as or former
boring template. The founders of ontheborderline.nut
would like to take this opportunity to wish all our
social misfit readers, a new year filled with Anti-statist
rhetoric and anarchistic desire.

ontheborderline admin.

Satan's Little Sister Of Mercy

"Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others - misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement - failure is not a mortgage on success - suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence - man is not a sacrifical animal on anyone's altar nor for anyone's cause - life is not one huge hospital."

Ayn Rand
Apollo 11
Spetember 1969

Pope Benedict XVI: More Socialist Rhetoric?

"The time came for Mary to deliver and she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manager, because there was no room for them in the inn. Those words touch our hearts every time we hear them.

"In some ways, mankind is awaiting God, waiting for Him to draw near. But when the moment comes, there is no room for him. Man is so preoccupied with himself, he has such an urgent need for all the space and all the time for his own things, that nothing remains for others -- for his neighbor, for the poor, for God. And the richer men become, the more they fill up all the space by themselves."

Pope Benedict XVI
Christmas Day 2007

from "North Star" by Meridel Le Sueur

Walking on giant paths, and being small and frightened, the north countryman created giant myths, sang to cover fear and nostalgia for old lands and bends of rivers he would never see again.


The mechanics, lumberjacks, the lakemen, rivermen, woodcutters, plowmen, the hunkies, hanyocks, whistle-punks; the writers of constitutions, the singers in the evening along unknown rivers; the stone masons, the quarrymen, the high slingers of words, the printers and speakers in the courthouses, the lawmakers, the carpenters, joiners, journeymen -- all kept on building. Every seven years they picked up the loans, mortgages, the grasshopper-ridden fields, the lost acres, the flat bank accounts, and went on, started over, turned a new leaf, worked harder, looked over new horizons.

The heritage they give us is the belief we have in them. It is the story of their survival, the sum of adjustments, the struggle, the folk accumulation called sense and the faith we have in the collective experience. It was real and fast, and we enclose it. Many unknown people lived and were destroyed by it. What looks to us grotesque or sentimental is the humor of the embryo, the bizarreness of the unformed, and the understanding of it is a prerequisite to our survival. It was real, and created our day. Perhaps it encloses us.

It is the deep from which we emerge.

Like a lion the people leave marks of their passing, reveal that moment of strength when the radicle plunged into the soil, in the fierce struggle on a strong day, and a nation held."

Maturity

"Maturity is the stage of life when you don't see eye to eye but can walk arm in arm."

Charles McDonald
The Christian Word