Rae's got a great quote over here:
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
Wonder what stage we are at? I suppose somewhere in between abundance and apathy I suppose. One gets a few glimpses of bondage every now and then, like when fear hits and there is the backlash after a terrorist attack. It is scary to think we could be headed in that direction.
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