posted July 25, 2007 09:15 PM            

July 14, 2007

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"

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. If we get National Health Care force on us with no private health care plans, then I would say we have completed step 7 to become completely dependent on the government.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million illegal immigrants and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years. Oh, and by the way, Social Security will collapse, pension funds will default and guess what?...... we all watched it happen. If you think the great depression of the nineteen-thirties was bad, at least many homes and farms had a garden and livestock back then. Today we have a refrigerator and a pantry. How long will that sustain a family?