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 2008 Presidential election:
Number of States won by:
Democrats: 19
Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by:
Democrats: 580,000
Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by:
Democrats: 127 million
Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Democrats: 13.2
Republicans: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: ‘In aggregate, the map of the territory the Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare…’ Olson believes the United States is 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.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
Your Professor Olson stats are from an old e-mail based on the 2000 election. Most of the stats are wrong or misleading, but it is interesting to note that the population of counties won by Gore was 143 million vs. 127 million for Bush Jr.
Check this out:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp
Thank you for your comment –
Please tell me how the stats are misleading. we know that the major metro centers – the huge cities in this country – tend to vote one way. the rest of the country votes the other way. I posted the election map in the past – and it is truly remarkable how the huge majority voted one way, and the metro areas the other. One thing I hope we can agree on is this: no matter what side one is on, there is clearly a disconnect between the metro areas, and the rest of the country. One other note: the Snopes folks have now been proven to be biased against conservatives – and their “research” confirms it. Here is a link that demonstrates this:
http://www.notoriouslyconservative.com/2009/02/snopes-liberal-political-agenda.html
Thanks again for your comment – and please drop by anytime. it’s good hearing from you.
LC