“A democracy is always temporary in nature; meaning it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until that time when voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” This quote is broadly attributed to Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh in 1887 referring to the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 prior.
“From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following 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.”
Is this our own obituary as America? “The United States of America”, Born 1776, Died 20–.”
In 2016, Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, believed the United States was somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of Democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “government dependency phase.” (That was three years ago!)
Professor Olson goes on to say, “If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million invaders called illegal’s – and they vote – we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer that five years. We will have jumped the small step from apathy to dependence. The next step is back into bondage.”
Some statisticians estimate we could be in the “apathy to dependence” phase now.
Greg Hughes says, “I hope that the ‘cycle’ is wrong and that our great country can overcome the complacency and the apathy, as well as our current widespread entitlement culture. Nobody except those in power wins if we don’t overcome that. History has proven it. If boundaries aren’t set, this could topple an economy.”
We need to wake up and see the smoke rising, or we may very well write our own obituary as a county.