Wednesday, December 22, 2010

How Long Do We Have?



The following was sent to me by my daughter and I thought it worthwhile to post and ponder.

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"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 they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always vote 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 world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;

6. From complacency to apathy;

7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage.


How long do we have?

3 comments:

Portia said...

My son studied this in college. From the looks of things, we don't have long. Sadly.

Also, everyone should read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Very interesting and we're headed there it seems.

glnroz said...

I also studied this in college..It tears the middle out of our grandkids future. I heard on the radio, driving to work, that every man woman and child in US owes 44,000 dollars each for these "voted gimme's"...

Sunny said...

This has been something that I really think about a lot. If those people who want, want, want from the federal and state governments would only realize that this money is coming from themselves.

If the congress would only pass spending bills that they don't have to borrow money to fund we would be a lot better off.

When we first started with an unbalanced budget, that is the beginning of our decline.