How much time do we have?

Given the infrequency of posts here, I don't know how often the blog gets checked by its handful of users, but even though I have some ideas stewing, I don't have anything original from myself right now. I do want to put something up though, and so I'll post this from an e-mail chain I got earlier this year (I got it April 7th).

In light of bailouts and tax "cuts" (from the new President... which are really tax credits for the '95%' receiving them... which is essentially, then, another stimulus package... or for the cynical, is essentially welfare...), the message below is somewhat troubling. I don't know if the words will prove to be prophetic, but it certainly makes you think.

I know the analysis is of the 2000 election, but I'm pretty certain that the urban-voting phenomenon only got stronger in 2008...

I cannot verify the facts herein, but here is goes:

How Long Do We Have?

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'

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Gore: 19 Bush: 29

Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000 Bush: 2,427,000Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million Bush: 143 million

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 taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' Olson believes the United States is now 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 'governmental dependency' phase.

Save the Environment, Explore the Embryos

I just finished reading an article about some of the things our new President is looking to do as soon as he takes office, and I find it devastatingly ironic.

Obama wants to use executive orders to reverse a couple of Bush executive orders, regarding oil and gas drilling, and stem cell research. I'm not here to discuss my views on executive orders, maybe that will come at another time. But the dichotomy here is amazing.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA?SITE=TXDAM&TEMPLATE=HOME.html&SECTION=HOME

I don't know how long that article will be at that link, but hopefully you'll get a chance to read it.

I'm also going to post the comment I made to Michael's previous post on abortion. It should get you up to speed on my thoughts on the issue of human being.

Comment:
Randy said...
An approach to the question that I once heard that I found intriguing took the issue of a question of when life begins to a question of 'being' or 'existence.'Basically, 'scientists' can aruge when life begins. Are sperm and eggs separately alive? What about when they combine? What about when limbs form or the baby moves (as mentioned above). What about at birth? As Michael points out, all this is greatly debatable. When sperm and egg come together to form the zygote, there is human being. Existence. What is that existence? Is it alive? I don't know. It certainly couldn't survive on its own. But it's still an existence that is not entirely it's mother's. The argument for the person who explained this theory then, is that that existence, that human being, cannot be obliterated intentionally by human means. Doing so would be destroying existence, an existence uniquely independent in a way, a valuable in having its own existence, its own human being.
End Comment.

In the same breath, Obama wants to stop oil and gas drilling "in some of the most senstive, fragile lands in Utah," and remove federal spending limits on embryonic stem cell research.

Save the trees, kill the human beings.

And this is just the business of day one.

It's Easter Time!

It's Easter Tuesday.

Today he rises, with promises of salvation that only a god can deliver.

Hope. Vote. And you will be saved.

Don't worry about trying to realistically determine how it will happen. Don't worry about that. Well, one party controlling the Executive and Legislative branches of government. Ok, that's how.

But don't worry about what that really means. Just vote. Vote. Get your friends to vote. Vote for salvation.

The savior is coming.

It's not your taxes being raised. It's the rich guy's. It's not your money being spread around to those with less money. No, you may benefit from it, or you may be unaffected by it, but the principle doesn't matter, because what's more important is salvation.

That's what's fair; that everyone have a piece of the pie.

Everyone should have a home. Everyone should have a job. That's how it should be.

Take from the ones that have built the country to what it is, so that way we can work to make it into what it beat. That's how it should be.

Don't think about all the ins and outs. Just get in the bubble of hope, and let's float to our new heaven in it.

We need a Newer Deal. One with a divine author. To save everyone. That's what we need.

Dream.

Believe.

Hope.


So let's make it happen.

Believe in hope.

Have faith in hope.

Vote for hope.

And today, the savior will rise.




Now, don't go holding me to the everything in this video. I just think it's pretty funny, and it goes along with my strongly sarcastic theme (except of course the video isn't meant to be sarcastic). And I'm definitely not endorsing the creator's blog. I've not visited it, nor do I plan to. At the very least, it's a good song.