Monday, November 17, 2008

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.

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