I had a fascinating conversation on the phone with Bill Pierce the other day and he mentioned this piece and sent it over to me so I thought I'd share:How Long Do We Have?Now, I am an optimist (Stop laughing Mark...and Doug...and Tom...and...), so I tend to believe in American exceptionalism. We are a great country of great people doing great things.
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"
But there is a certain amount of complacency in this country. Dare I call it apathy? And the Democratic Party would call themselves the Dependence Party if they were actually honest with themselves (and the rest of us!).
All in all, I find it difficult to imagine a world that wasn't lead by the United States of America. We are such a freedom-loving country that I can't imagine we would choose a path that would lead us to bondage, yet I look at the words above and I can't help but think that history repeats itself time and again... I see the choices that we make and I wonder if we aren't well on our way already.
I recently finished reading Size Matters by Joel Miller, and was struck by the way government has slowly, but surely, hijacked our lives. How many examples do we need to see that government is not the answer to our problems?
What are your thoughts?
