Lysander Spooner on the 2008 election

If, like me, you have had your fill of non-stop election coverage, partisan peans (sic) to would-be kings (and queens), heated discussions over whether McCain or Obama's pastor hates America and apple pie more, and the every-four-years talk about the "Most. Important. Election. Ever.", then you may enjoy this letter from 19th century radical Lysander Spooner which shows that things really haven't changed a whole heck of a lot over the years.

Sent to President Glover Cleveland in 1886, Spooner's letter could just as easily be describing modern day America. In the excerpt below he gives the U.S. political system a much needed reality check, and in the process, as Karl Rove might note, he sounds an awful lot like one of those angry left-wing bloggers:

Lysander Spooner was an anarchist in the 19th century. He was strongly against slavery yet supported the right of the Southern states to secede from the Union. He established a mail business which so successfully competed against the U.S. Postal Service that the government shut it down. He took a dim view of the political process of his time which was not all that different from the political process of our time.