Every once in a great while, we are reminded that the World Wide Web can actually be of good use. Sure, we have C-SPAN providing coverage of the increasingly-irrelevant political conventions and amusing doodles, but do these really serve to improve the intellectual well-being of the public? Today I located a copy of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” originally published in 1727 and still relevant today.

Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.

As society rejects the adoption of conventional means to promote the well-being of the underclass — and thereby the stability and prosperity of the people as a whole — alternatives must be pursued.