How Long Does America Have?
While surfing the internet this morning, I came across a very interesting read on another person’s blog. I am not going to push this off as fact, or say I know for certain that the particular individual it is attributed to actually wrote it.
I say, do as I did — read it, research it and form your own opinion. I know once I finished reading the information and giving it some serious thought, it left me with one question (given there was any truth in what I had just read) — How Long Does America Have?
For starters, I did some additional searching on what I had read and found some more information about it on Wikipedia as well as various other websites. Below you will see what I found and read as well as my personally formed opinion regarding it. Please feel free to leave your own.
According to Wikipedia (which does have its own problems with falsehoods and inaccuracies) and various other websites, the following unverified information and quotation has been attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler. It has also been attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, Benjamin Disraeli, R. G. LeTourneau and others.
It is likely a combination of two quotes, each of which can be traced back at least as far as the 1950’s, but only with anonymous attribution. Specific attributions, such as those to Tytler, only came later. Moreover, the quotes cannot be found to have appeared together until the 1970’s. That said, regardless of the origins of the quotes, it is interesting to note how accurately they detail the past and how much further we have progressed along that predicted line.
“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:
- From bondage to spiritual faith;
- From spiritual faith to great courage;
- From courage to liberty;
- From liberty to abundance;
- From abundance to complacency;
- From complacency to apathy;
- From apathy to dependence;
- From dependence back into bondage.”
In summary, I personally believe, given the results of the presidential election and all of the promises of change and government handouts that were made by the victor prior to, the United States is now somewhere between the ‘apathy to dependence’ phase in the above list. In other words, it appears that more and more Americans these days are simply looking for a free lunch, even if that means the government is taking larger portions from other hardworking Americans in order to make it happen. This is extremely selfish and shortsighted because one does not have to look very far to see how efficient the government is at messing up almost anything it gets its hands on or control over.
On a final note, given what is easily researched and factually known regarding the victor’s beliefs about and ties to socialism, I leave you with another quote attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville.
“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man, socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word — equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
God help us, we do not deserve it, but we are definitely going to need it.
God Bless!
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