this is scary

[rockytop]

This is scary and most of you may have seen this but it's worth passing around again. It seems one our largest states, California, has already reached the end.

At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in
the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The
University of Edinborough) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian
Republic" some 2,000 years prior.

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until
the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts
from the public treasury. 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 due to loose
fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds 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."

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul,
Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent
Presidential election:

Population of counties won by:

Gore=127 million

Bush=143 million

Square miles of land won by:

Gore=580,000

Bush=2,2427,000

States won by:

Gore=19

Bush=29

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:

Gore=13.2

Bush=2.1

Professor Olson adds:

"In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned
by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory
encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living
off government welfare..."

Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and
"complacency" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy; with some
40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the
"governmental dependency" phase.

[slugman]

keep working millions on welfare depend on you

[kevin1]

Professor Olsen apparently belongs to the "half empty" crowd . Personally , I think that we're living in great times . My parents had to wake up each day wondering if they were gonna get nuked at any minute .

[rockytop]

Kevin1, I grew up with your parents and being nuked was a minor concern in my life. Except for the cuban missile crisis, I have never really felt like we were going to have a nuclear war. Terrorism is a heck of alot scarier than nukes were because it's so much easier task to carry out an act of terrorism. I agree the odds are small that an individual will be directly affected by a terrorist attack but any nut in the world can blow up about anything he wants to at any time as long as it's not an airline.
I was in a large hospital recently with thousands of patients and even more visitors. It would have been so easy to carry a homemade bomb into that place and put it where they store all the oxygen bottles and blow that hospital off the map.
Speaking of nukes, I fear nukes more now that I ever did in the 60's or 70's simply because there are several russian nukes missing.

[Coastie]

He forgot to factor in Switzerland which is today over 600 years and counting (and at the time was approaching 400 years) as both a democracy and a neutral. Britan as a "Civilization" if you have to put a label on it, had been around for quite a while when he wrote that as well. The Spanish, Portuguese, French, Germans and a host of others have long since passed the 200 year mark, none of these were democracies. While they may no longer be "Great" they are still not insignificant.
Beside all of that, we, the USA is a REPUBLIC and always has been, The founding fathers were rightfully scared to death of democracy which in another descriptive name is called mob rule.

[CODave]

And from bondage to.... spiritual faith maybe?

As Coastie said we are not a democracy... I can't stand it when people say we are. I do not share his optimism however. We are well down the path of destruction. We are somewhere between these two stages I believe.

>From complacency to apathy;

>From apathy to dependence;


Our founders knew democracy would lead to the pit falls mentioned previously. You do not want democracy... majority rule. They used to call it democratic despotism.

As our federal powers have increased to an unbalanced level (not checked enough by the states) and our elected officials rule by polls, and bend to the will of the people...(to get elected again) and not by principle nor the constitution, have we not in effect become a democracy?


The following an excerpt from Federalist paper #10

The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole. The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.

I say we have eroded the controls put into place by our wise founders and now are effectually operating as a democracy. And factions are ruling our country. The factions are continually fighting for that rule. Thus the partisan politics we see today.


A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
Walter Bagehot

Sound familiar? Like political correctness?