When the thirteen colonies were still a part of England, Professor Alexander Tyler wrote about the fall of the Athenian republic over two thousand years previous to that time:



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 treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred 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 to bondage.

Alexander Tyler


[b]Where are we today ?[/b]

With the help of the rationalizing neo-cons, the country is going from complacency into fast forward mode glossing right over apathy and dependency and going directly into bondage.

Apparently a "republic" is not much different than a "democracy"... at least according to some old dead white guy:


[b]"I subscribe to the principle, that the will of the majority honestly expressed should give law."
~ [red]Thomas Jefferson[/red].[/b]


[b]"It must be acknowledged that the term "republic" is of very vague application in every language... Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say purely and simply it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of direct action of the citizens.

...Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township."
~ [red]Thomas Jefferson[/red]. [/b]


[b]"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
~ [red]Thomas Jefferson[/red].[/b]




So let's stop mincing words. In the case of the Founding Fathers, many took "republicanism" and "democracy" to be essentially the same thing. They only feared an UNREASONABLE populace, not democracy/republicanism itself.




BTW, as some here CONSTANTLY point out, even GW uses the words "democracy" and "republic" interchangeably (as did Jefferson)

[b]"Our Republic would surely founder but for the faith and confidence that we collectively place in our Constitution. And it could not prosper without our diligent commitment to upholding the Constitution's original words and implementing its founding principles."
~ [red]George W. Bush[/red], September 17, 2001. Citizenship Day and Constitution Week[/b]


Again, it's the irrational PEOPLE that are the problem, not the republic/democracy itself.

I like some of the analogy here but Malthus and his ilk have lived on the over-population version of this for a long time and it hasn't reached the tipping point.  Pretty hard to get an overall national pulse, at least that's my opinion.  A good thing to look over and do some self-examination for sure.

I always had the idea that the several states offered a buffer to democracy/mobocracy.   If a state was truly offensive to freedom (like California) you could move to Arizona or Nevada and it seems some people and businesses are doing this.  States can work to incubate good ideas of fiscal management and governance that can be examples to floundering brethren mired in their utopian fog.


I said buffer, not wall or fence because unless, as Jefferson said, we are reasonable, it will infect the whole country eventually.

And with the help of many kilos of legal and illegal drugs, brog is going from occasionally witty jabs to irrational, incoherent, paranoid ravings.

We can thank Al-Qaeda for knocking us from complacency back to great courage...maybe liberty.

Brought to you by the party of Harry W. 'we deserved September 11' Browne.

We're probably at the selfishness point. National debt is only growing, and the economy is only worsening. Abundance ended in the 90's.

I don't think so...
"Patriot Act"?  TIA?  War on Terror?

And?  You must have a point in there somewhere.  The Patriot Act curbs the freedoms of people who are in the US temporarily, not citizens.  The TIA is clumsy and incompetent, but that hardly qualifies as a blow to our liberty.  And the war on terror is a good thing.

We, the People --- The United States of America, don't fall into any of those catagories.
We're going from getting a face slap to kicking some Turd World ass.

Until the rest of the world decides to get with the program and realizes WE are going to run the show until they do, it's gonna be weird for a long, long time.
When the world decides they, too, want to be 'American' in their own countries, THEN things can happen the way they're supposed to on this planet.

Howzat? [:D]

Somebody else was listening to Boortz this morning.....