17 July 2009

The Fall Of The Republic

Alexander Fraser Tytler, lawyer and writer, is credited (although it is undocumented) with the following:

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 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.

Sources:
"Alexander Fraser Tytler." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 03 July2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler. Under Creative Commons License.

The founding fathers studied this and feared it. The reason that The United States was set up as a republic and not a democracy is because they were attempting to break this cycle. They knew that if people could vote themselves entitlements, they most certainly would.

The Republic has outlasted the Tytler Cycle, so far. The problem is that the country has shifted backward, rather than moved forward. Unfortunately, many do not understand this, as they really have not been students of history.

If you think about what is going on right now with regards to the shift to an entitlement society, the case can certainly be made that we are at the "From apathy to dependence" stage of the cycle. Voters are voting for promises of stuff they want (i.e. health care), therefore allowing the government to grow and take over more aspects of their lives.

If they do not wake up and see what is happening, it will not be long before they move back into the bondage stage our forefathers fought so hard to escape.


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1 comment:

  1. They can go back into bondage, I'm not going with them.

    ReplyDelete

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