How long do we have? (USA Politics)

Interesting forward I got:


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 Hamline 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.

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.

Unfortunately, those who pass this on will be members of the taxpaying public, not the freeloaders.

Not if Ron Paul has anything to say about it!!

Huge misuse of date.

He jumps from the fact that Gore won in areas with higher population density to freeloaders voted for Gore.

We just have to survive to when Bush is out of office (1/20/09!) then all we need is a democrat to get into office (Obama or Edwards) and we’ll be fine.

Interesting given that the title under your username says: “Conformity Sucks”

Conformity would be following the whole Republican or Democrat mindset. Where those are the only choices and therefore if you don’t like the current administration, you vote for the other. In 2006, we apparently voted to end the war by sending the democrats, and what we got is more war.

BTW, Obama is a warmonger, and would make a nuclear first strike against Iran. Edwards voted for the Iraq war, but now takes the anti-war stance because that’s what it will take to get elected, but it’s unlikely he’ll stay anti-war. Edwards said that we all need to be forced to do service: “One of the things we ought to be thinking about is some level of mandatory service to our country, so that everybody in America — not just the poor kids who get sent to war — are serving this country.” More slavery anyone?

Apparently that forward has been going around since soon after the 2000 elections, and it’s morphed a little.

I don’t know that I completely agree with the lifecycle, but for the sake of this thread… I agree that we are around the apathy area. There are lots who are complacent, lots who are apathetic, and a growing number who are dependent. And it seems to be shifting towards dependency.

I think 5 years is much too short. My personal belief is that even if things continue just as they are, the US will continue for probably 50 years or more. Other countries have (unfortunately) shown that much higher tax rates and government interference is sustainable for many years.

Personally though, I expect things to happen in America that will shake up the list you have. There have been examples before where the US has backed up to “spiritual faith”. Wars and the like have knocked us away from “apathy” and back towards “liberty” or “courage”.

As I have watched the younger generation come up (say… age 25 and under?) I have been surprised by their attitudes. They seem to be far more willing to fix problems and change things for the better than their parents. I am amazed at the amount of people I have met that do community projects, or that want to join the Peace Corps or things like that.

So, I guess I agree that the current overall trend is not good… But I expect the trend to reverse soon…

Keld

I wouldn’t give any validity to those numbers… with the mess that gerrymandering has created within our electoral system, the resulting numbers hardly represent reality.

Funnily this kind of theory on history has been around for eons.
It was considered by the greeks, the romans, the arabs …
Apart for being used by people moody on decadence (and BTW a major argument carried also by fascists)
I’ll be ready to listen if it was accompanied by more dynamic vision (I know, I know for every complex problem of society there is a solution which is simple … and completely off the mark :o ).
-Hey I am the old grumpy man! why do we exchange our roles? :stuck_out_tongue: -

Well, I now realize that it is hard to tell this over the internet, but the title was meant to be sarcastic… but I don’t necessarily think that I disagree with all republicans, I just despise Bush.

no we need an independant because all presidents do now is trie to gain power for there party

You can read about this in Snopes.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you an avid supporter of welfare programs in the political quiz thread?

EDIT: yes, I’m horribly wrong. Sorry Keldridge, I got your avatar mixed up with someone else’s. :o

Bush is not a republican. He is a Republican. Proper nouns are case sensitive. Bush is a neocon, the left wing of the Republican party and is politically closer to most Democrats than to republicans. The difference is that neocons prefer public-private partnerships in providing government services (fascism), whereas Democrats prefer public government controlled services (socialism/communism).

Wheel rider

I thought the murder rate stats were bs, so I googled “murder rates per 100,000”. The very first result was the article you linked to. Beat me to it !
So apparently this is just right wing crap. The actual small difference in the murder rate for Gore’s counties is because the murder rate is larger in cities.
As far as the larger question of is the country doomed, I don’t see any logic in comparing the present to the past. So much has changed. To suggest we must suffer the fate of Athens makes no account for the vast changes in technology and societies since then. We truly sail uncharted seas.:slight_smile:

Ignorance is bliss.

We’re not a democracy, we’re a republic. The people do not get the opportunity to vote themselves bread and circuses. Does that change anything?

That whole Bush vs. Gore thing. What’s the point, anyway? That the nation made the right choice in voting for Bush? I don’t think so. Though it would not be possible to prove otherwise, I think that in 2000, and again even moreso in 2004, the American people voted for one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had. We’ll see how that all turns out.

According to the constitution, yes, we are supposed to be a republic. However, under President Woodrow “we need to make the world safe for democracy” Wilson, we changed into a democracy.

The people get to vote for food stamps, which can be used to buy bread.

Bush or Gore… both the wrong choice. :slight_smile:

Bush is among Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR as being the worst. I wonder if in a few decades, the general public will think that Bush was one of the greatest, similar to Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR.

Eek! That’s a scary thought…

Grow up, musketman. It may be convenient to divide politics into goodRepublicans and badDemocrats, but it’s wrong.

The problem isnt really whether a Republican or a Democrat or a whatever is the president… The problem is more that most of the people in the US have allowed our government to become something it was never intended to be. We’ve allowed every part of the government to overstep their bounds and take more power than they were ever given.

As long as the people continue to let the government do wrong things, the country will continue to decline…