I sat back this past week and watched the Democratic Presidential Debates. It seemed like every sound byte was another candidate talking about another promised giveaway program that seems to be meant to buy votes. Some of the candidates even wanted to give away money to people who were not citizens. Sadly, we are truly nearing the end of this Country as we know it. Back in 1776, around the time of our Nation’s founding, a European historian, Alexander Fraser Tytler, published a work entitled, “The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic.” In his work, Tytler made the following observation:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loss of fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this 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 again to bondage.