this got posted around a bit , found it kind of intriguing:
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Not many of our citizens seem aware of our fragile form of government, called a democracy. Alexander Fraser Tytler (1748 - 1813) wrote a remarkable book, The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic. Tytler wrote about ancient democracy well before our own American experience with democracy had been fully tested. Do not forget that our democracy recently counted a 200th birthday, the average age of great civilizations.
Tytler wrote: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapes over loose fiscal policy always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have 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 selfishness,
from selfishness to complacency,
from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependency,
from dependency back into bondage.
Consider this as you ponder the rise and fall of civilizations through the nine stages Tytler observes. Was the carnival atmosphere in Congress las October over debate on our nation's spendthrift ways symptomatic of a decaying nation? Where do we fit today in the sequence Tytler outlines?>>>
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