Quote that sent shivers down my spine...

[Moparmike]

I read this all the way thru, and its like standing at the side of a highway of time, look left and its the past, look right and you see the future. I realize that people can change the future because "it isnt written yet," but we seem to be headed down this path, with nothing to stop us. Someone please tell me that I have nothing to worry about...(lie if you have to...)

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. No, he wasn't writing about the United States. This quote is well over one hundred years old. Tyler was writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic.

 

[capbuster]

Yes it is a most disturbing quote. I recently finished a book which was mentioned by my preacher during one of his Sunday morning sermons. The book is written by Peter Marshall and David Manuel and is entitled " The Light and the Glory". It covers the founding of this great country from Christopher Columbus to George Washinton. It discusses similar topics and I recommend it highly.

 

[C.R.Sam]

Democracy...Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.

Republic....Two wolves and an armed sheep.

Sam

 

[Baba Louie]

Add to that quote this one...

"Perception IS reality", then go ask 100 people what form of government we have, and I'll bet you a box or two of Krispey Kreme's finest that 99.9% of the respondents (hyperbole in action there) reply "Democracy".
I've even read quotes from some of our esteemed elected officials using that word.

So IF, and I say IF, perception is reality, then we do have a slight problem. Looking at the track record of the last 70 years or so, I think I'd probably use a couple of words and say a "Socialist Democracy" as opposed to a "Democratic Republic". One who is more learned than I could probably debate it either way and not be wrong too often.

What was that Franklin quote? Something about, "... a Republic... if you can keep it"???

Adios

 

[Standing Wolf]

Democracy...Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Republic....Two wolves and an armed sheep.

That's very well said!

 

[tyme]

Just because FDR screwed up the country doesn't mean that the Constitution is flawed in this respect.

The solution to that problem is simply not to give the government the power to give money to the people. The Founders were quite aware of classical history. The general welfare clause, no matter what liberals might like to think, has nothing to do with the government giving money to the poor (I'd say needy, but that sounds more harsh).

 

[Baba Louie]

Mopar.
If that quote scared ya, the few numbers in this link should turn your hair white and have foaming spittle coming out of your screaming mouth...

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0308d.asp

say adios to the America we want. Welcome to the New America, where ignorance is bliss and rampant... don't forget to say thanks to the parents and teachers of our children.

Adios

 

[ravinraven]

What all politicians know

The quote below I've heard attributed to Mario Cuomo, but all political animals [and observers] know it:

------------------
The two most important assets of government are the ignorance of the people and their short memory.
----------------

Here we sit in these times and NO government school teaches anything about how the government is supposed to work or anything about what the rights in the bill of rights actually mean.

The rights of the people are the bane of politicians and police. Naturally government schools are not going to teach anything real about rights. They will teach about "rights" that courts "discover" that need protection. As government finds more rights that they need to protect for you, the sum total of liberty diminishes.

Can we save liberty now that we've gone so far down this slippery slope? I think not. We are doomed to go again around the cycle that is quoted in the founding post in this thread. It is easier to re-establish liberty through civil warfare and political upheaval than to educate the people in how to preserve liberty methinks.

ravinraven

 

[GSB]

I read somewhere that the Tyler quote, and the commonly cited primary source, are not real. Has anyone actually read the quote from the primary source?

 

[XLMiguel]

California - a good example of a bad example living up to the quote.

 

[BigG]

Largesse - hey, where's mine!

 

[Nightfall]

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.

We are very near the end of this sequence, IMHO. Somewhere in the apathy to dependency area.

 

[tyme]

GSB, I can't find the Tyler quote at bartleby, but Tocqueville implied something similar:

"In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it." --Tocqueville

 

[BigG]

From a google search:

John [sic] Tyler summarized other dangers of giving non-property owners the vote:

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 loose fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. (Alexander Tyler, in his 1770 book,Cycle of Democracy)

It appears the quote is legit; at least I've quoted it a few times over the years, attributing it to Tyler.

 

[Jeff White]

The rights of the people are the bane of politicians and police.

ravinraven, That may be true in other countries, but in this one you need to drop the police from the quote. While there are some instances of abuse, American citizens are served by police officers who are more concerned about their rights and not treading on them then anywhere else in the world.

It is easier to re-establish liberty through civil warfare and political upheaval than to educate the people in how to preserve liberty methinks.

<Rant mode on>
Ever been in a civil war? How about overseas in a time of war? Ever been in combat? Civil warfare isn't some romantic notion where the patriots win easliy and bloodlessly. It tears apart families, millions would live in squalor and poverty near starvation. We don't have an agrarian society that could feed itslef while services shut down. Want to live with intermittent electricity for months and years? How about shortages of nearly everything? Paying black market prices for the goods you could get. Want to live in fear that your neighbors will turn you in for who you associate with or what you say. Think the Patriot Act is bad?...brother, it ain't nothing like you'll see in a civil war.

I will never undertand why people want to sit on the sidelines in the culture war, stacking magazines and straightening the pins on their grenades, waiting, some even hoping for the day it comes down to shooting.

It will always be easier to re-establish liberty through political means. Have you voted lately? How about ran for local office? Written letters to the editor? Attended a school board meeting? Ran for school board? Organized parents to keep the books and lesson plans teaching the right stuff?

Your guns aren't the only power you have. If you haven't done these things, I mentioned, then I don't think you're in the fight. Get involved now before it comes down to shooting. Is that the legacy you want to leave your children with? How many generations do you think it would take to win a civil war? What makes you think you even could win? What would happen to the rest of the world while we went through the turmoil? Do you believe for a second that the rest of the world would sit back and not get involved? You'd have every foreign government who wanted something from post civil war America involved.

I think that those people who want to advocate civil war on the internet, but are too lazy to get involved before the shooting starts, won't have the guts to see a shooting war through. The fight is here, today. It's right there in front of us to win now. All we have to do is get involved in big enough numbers and we can take back our liberty bloodlessly. Oh, it will be a slow process, maybe two generations. But to me that is preferable to the suffering, starvation and bloodletting that is the other solution.

The political class that's running the country started out just as we are now. But they got involved, worked in one political party or another, worked in one media outlet or another. They took our liberty because we were too busy living our fat and happy lives to pay attention to them. Ya'all are crazy if you think we can't take it back the same way. It took them 60 years to really take it from us, it'll take at least that long to take it back. If you think you could do it any quicker by force, you're wrong. It would probably take at least that long, cost millions of lives and you still might not free the whole country.
<Rant Mode Off>

Disclaimer: The above rant is not directed at any one individual, but at everyone who thinks armed insurrection is a good idea right now. The opinoins expressed above are mine and do not reflect the opinion of any organization I may be associated with.

Jeff

You'll now be returned to the regularly scheduled discussion

 

[ravinraven]

Thanx, Jeff White

Hey, man!

It's wonderful to know that at least one more soul must lay awake nights shuddering at the possibility of re-establishment of freedom the hard way. And the listing of the many ways we can work to roll back the various encroachments on liberty is I believe the best I have seen. I can't think of a thing you missed.

It's true that we got into this mess by letting "them" do it to "us."

The thing left to learn about The Constitution is: can it save itself by the people applying the items you listed so well that "we the people" can do? That leads to the question: Do we have the guts and ambition to do what needs to be done? If we don't, then we will slide into a civil war situation. Yes war is all the bad things you mention. I fear that it is far easier to slide into war than to do all that needs to be done to stay out of it.

I damn sure hope I am wrong about the "slide" into war.

There are reasons to be hopeful. I've been talking about the Bill Of Rights and what it mean for about thirty years. My liberal "friends" all treat me as if I had some rare disease. However, I find that I'm not the only one talking "rights" now. More and more people are beginning to notice what is going on even in the face of government schools actively trying to make students ignorant of liberty, rights and any understanding of government. I have been in two houses on other business and noticed one or another of my letters-to-the-editor magnetted to the refrigerator door.

I've never been in combat, but helped stare the USSR down from a B-52 years ago. My 7 or 8 years on a school board involved talking money all the time and never talking education. The local Parent-Teacher's group in that town spent their time trying to raise teacher's pay.

I "ranted" a bit in the county legislature up here when they were considering banning county workers from smoking in their cars on county property. I'm not "pro-smoke" but did point out that the banning of everyday activities by honest people was an attempt to control something because we couldn't control crime, terrorism, etc. I finished with something about "... as you take this little bite out of liberty, consider who is doing the most damage to the fabric of America: you taking that small bite or Mohammad Atta and his sky full of hate-mongers." That was a month ago and I still hear where I was quoted on TV and public radio!

A few of us are beginning public education by hosting such things as a Columbus Day Picnic and celebrating Dec 15th, Bill Of Rights Day. The main push in these two efforts is a retired College Prof that used to sing the praises of "liberalism" in his lectures. When he "saw the light" the SUNY system forced him out the door. I was fired from SUNY for being on a jury that found a politically incorrect verdict and then defending it in the newspaper. Fortunately, we both were able to retire and keep eating.

The "roll back" is a daunting task. War on any scale is far worse than daunting. I do think that if we can roll back peacefully, we will have finally established the validity of the work the founders did. Peaceful "roll-back" is the only option worth working on. It is the only option even worth considering. Unfortunately, the "war" option is too damn easy to stumble into. War does focus attention. Brrrrrrrr!

These forums are great in that one can see that he/she is not alone in considering how to save ourselves.

There is hope---and a lot of questions. And here, more than in the space program, "Failure is not an option."

ravinraven

 

[greyhound]

A brief point:

I think the slide down the wrong slope began with the Great Depression and the sacrifices needed to win WW II.

Those were desperate times, and things were done to help in the short term, with no consideration of the long term ramifications.

Couple that with improvements in technology and standard of living, and hey, like someone said, Americans are fat and happy and don't care that they have lost their Constitutional rights.

Two years ago, 3,000 Americans were murdered by foreigners, and three months later it was forgotten. We have a long way to go, people.

 

[feedthehogs]

C.R.Sam.
One of my favorite quotes I've been using for years to describe the difference between the two.
It brings the point home.

I think we are at "from apathy to dependency". I still don't think its too late though.
Many of us working hard to change that. Sacrificed alot of personal time but thats the trade off.
Want to leave a great place to live for my kids and my grandkids.

Get out and vote. But do what they did in Tenn. Don't vote for the lesser of two evils, run your own candidates.
BW

 

[Moparmike]

Wow, such good responses. I too look at war as an ugly option, one best not even considered such. Unfortunately, I look at the uphill battle against the avalanche we would have to fight and it is quite discouraging. We have to do something, and either way, it wont be pretty.

 

[Kalvan]

This quote is from Edith Hamilton's book about 4th Century BC Athens, "The Echo of Greece", written in 1957, seems appropriate here.

"In the great days that followed after Salamis the spirit of Solon's Athens persisted and even grew stronger. It was the Athenians' pride and joy to give to their city. That they could get material benefits from her never entered their mind except, of course, a certain degree of safety behind her walls and her army. But the state was not an asset; they themselves were the state. There had to be a complete change of attitude before Athenians could look at the city as an employer who paid her citizens for doing her work, and the change went deep. Now instead of men giving to the state the state was to give to them. What the people wanted was a government that would provide a comfortable life for them, and with this as the foremost object ideas of freedom and self-reliance and service to the community were obscured to the point of disappearing. Athens was more and more looked on as a co-operative business possessed of great wealth in which all citizens had a right to share. The larger and larger funds demanded made heavier and heavier taxation necessary, but that troubled only the well-to-do, as always a minority, and no one gave a thought to the possibility that the source might be taxed out of existence. Politics was now closely connected with money, quite as much as with voting. Indeed, the one meant the other. Votes were for sale as well as officials.

"The whole process was clear to Plato. Athens had reached the point of rejecting independence, and the freedom she now wanted was freedom from responsibility. There could be only one result. "The excess of liberty in states or individuals," he said, "seems to pass into excess of slavery." If men insisted on being free from the burden of a life that was self-dependent and also responsible for the common good, they would cease to be free at all. Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms."

Athens was not a Republic but a direct democracy. It was originally set up so that the property owners who formed the hoplite phalanx were the ones who voted. After Salamis, when those without property had pulled the oars of the fleet, the landless decided they should have a say in the government since they had fought for the polis as well. "Republic" is a Latin word, and the Roman Republic probably owed more to Sparta than to Athens. (I've never understood why we call Plato's discourse "The Republic" instead of it's proper Greek name, "Politeia", which has a more generic meaning of "government", since he was proposing an ideal government.)

 

[BowStreetRunner]

Kalvan,
that is a great excerpt to share, thanks

 

[Parker Dean]

Originally posted by tyme
Just because FDR screwed up the country doesn't mean that the Constitution is flawed in this respect

I think that the damage goes back further than that. It can probably be shown that FDR was able to implement his programs due to the loss of control over the Treasury by the voters.

The US was set up as a Republic which means that voting is restricted. In the case of the US I believe you had to have a certain amount of assets, and not a small sum either. The idea being that you wouldn't be all that keen on taxing yourself in order to get government handouts. This was the check against the voters voting themselves public largesse.

Somewhen along the way, and I'll bet it was a court decision, the restriction on voting was removed. I think the pretext was that it was discriminatory. OK fine. The problem is the check against voters looting the treasury was removed and not replaced. I'm sure the pols thought this was a great idea since they could now buy votes directly.

The way I see it the basic problem is: Just how are we going to re establish control of public money? I can't think of anything other than if you pay taxes you can vote and if you don't you can't. I can just imagine how long that'd last if by some miracle it even got signed into law.

But this is a vitally important question that MUST be answered. I see the money control problem as being at the root of so many of the reasons we are unhappy with the direction of the country.

Just think of the old adage that if you keep a government poor you keep it off your back.

 

[grampster]

Baba,

Franklin's quote when exiting after finalizing the Constitution was to the wife of one of his peers when she asked "Well, Sir, did you give us a Democracy?" To which he replied, "No Madam, we have given you a Republic, if you can keep it".

It seems to be slipping away, not because of the petifoggers that are in charge, but because the sheeple have allowed it to happen.