The Fall Of Democracy

State Representative Bill Dunn in June was the featured speaker at the Halls Republican Club. During his talk he mentioned locating a quote from Alexander Tyler. On the first day of this past years legislative session Rep. Dunn placed a copy on the desk of every legislator.

When the thirteen colonies were still a part of England, Professor Alexander Tyler wrote about the fall of the Athenian republic over two thousand years previous to that time:

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 greatest 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.

With the Democrats in Washington and Nashville, it appears that we are in apathy and fast approaching dependency and soon bondage.