Sorry to reply to a two year old post. I wanted to bring it forward.
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HOW LONG DO WE HAVE?
This is the most interesting thing I've read in a long time. The sad thing about it, you can see it coming.
I have always heard about this democracy countdown. It is interesting to see it in print. God help us, not that we deserve it.
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: 2,427,000
Population 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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From www.truthorfiction.com. This is the most truthful fact checking site on the ineternet.
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This quote has been circulating on the Internet for quite a while.
We have not found any documentation of it beyond the past ten years.
Some versions say its author is a man named Tyler, but It is most often attributed to Sir Alex Fraser Tytler.
Tytler is real. He was a Scottish jurist, historian, and Edinburgh University professor.
We can find evidence that he wrote only one book titled "Universal history, from the creation of the world to the beginning of the eighteenth century" published in 1837 by Hilliard, Gray and Company in Boston.
TruthOrFiction.com has searched a digital version of the book and has not found anything resembling the alleged quote.
We have not found a book titled "The Decline and the Fall of the Athenian Republic" as is described in some versions of the eRumor or a book titled "The Fall of the Athenian Republic."
Last updated 9/27/03 |
