A warning was given about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution in 1787. A Scottish history professor by the name of Professor Alexander Tyler had this to say about "The Fall of the Athenian Republic" over 2,000 years previous to that date:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) 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, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years.
These nations have progressed through this sequence:"
From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to complacency;
from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependence,
from dependence back into bondage.
Having read what Professor Tyler had to say, now read the following and see what Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote about the 2000 Presidential election between Al Gore and George Bush.
*Population of counties won by Gore 127 million -- by Bush 143 million.
*Square miles of country won by Gore 580,000 -- by Bush 2,427,000.
*States won by Gore 19 -- by Bush 29.
*Murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore 13.2 -- by Bush 2.1 (not a typo).
Professor Olson adds: "The map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the people of this great country, NOT the citizens living in cities in tenements owned by the government and living off the government."
Professor Olson thinks the .U.S now is between the apathy and complacency phase of democracy although he believes that 40% of the nation's population already has reached the dependency phase.
It would be naive at best to think that it can't happen here in the US. It's already started, both at a federal and state level. Back in 1965 President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared that "The Great Society", his programs to win the war against poverty, would eliminate the problems with urban decay and ease the burdens placed upon the poor. They did anything but solve the problems and created even more dependency upon the government. What started as a hand up for the poor and undereducated became something seen as an entitlement, something that was owed. Some of that trend has been reversed, but the mindset still exists.
On a state level the perfect example of how a democracy can be twisted into something resembling a public feeding trough is California. Things that had once been a "nice to have" program or plan have slowly become, over the years, 'necessities' to be maintained at all costs and the taxpayer be damned. And it hasn't been just fiscal mismanagement that has brought California to its financial knees, but the ever increasing entitlements that suck in more and more taxpayer dollars and send them down a monetary black hole.
Either the state financial system eventually crashes because of the ever increasing demands made upon it, or the decision must be made to stop the insanity and much needed and overdue repairs performed. The next few years will tell the rest of the nation whether the California political machines will be able to make the necessary changes, as unpopular as they might be, or whether it will be business as usual while the taxpayers and businesses in the Golden State decide they've had enough and vote with their feet.
It's time for everyone in the U.S. to take a close look at government spending, decide what are truly necessities versus what are nice-to haves masquerading as necessities, and get back to taking care of them. And maybe, just maybe, if we can do that we might be able to hold off the fall of yet another republic and the subsequent descent into anarchy followed by the bondage of dictatorship.
March of Freedom in the Middle East
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Originally Posted by Farnan
Iran is not a democracy 
