Sent by Robert: About Republics
This has been around before, and you’ve probably seen it…but the message is worth repeating…
Somebody’s got to step up and do what’s right for this country, not what’s politically expedient, or what’s more likely to get themselves re-elected. The politicians can’t be trusted to do it, so the voters must.
About the time our original 13 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 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 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:
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 ”
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million ;
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
States won by: Gore: 19 Bush: 29 (Isn’t that 48? What happened to the other 2?)
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 mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements living off government welfare…”
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency & apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.
Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 7:20 AM and filed under Articles. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.