About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
'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:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage'
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE,
ONLY BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE
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Time to Channel Cousin Frank
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Whatever their differences, you can understand JM's TR fixation. It's fitting for a man who has always been his own action figure. Whether it was flying so low that he once cut power lines in Italy or cheering up his fellow POWs with his antics, McCain has proved a figure of impish fun. This and offering total media access that up to this year resulted in such slobbering press coverage that he only half-jokingly referred to reporters as "my base." Until they started doing their jobs. Then they got trashed.
As long as McCain was in the Senate, the back flips, pirouettes and half-gainers off the high board were exciting. And when they went over badly, McCain developed an appealing habit of profusely apologizing, as he did after shamelessly pandering to racists in South Carolina on the Confederate flag in 2000. Earlier, while denying wrongdoing, he self-flagellated for getting cozy in the 1980s with savings-and-loan crook Charles Keating. This led to his fervor for campaign-finance reform (forgotten this year as his campaign loaded up with lobbyists), but the "Keating Five" S&L debacle did not cause him to support more banking regulation. Because of his charm and the respect others feel for his ability to survive his Vietnam captivity, his apologies were routinely accepted, even if his promises not to ever sell out his principles again were honored in the breach.
McCain's answer to the charge that he's impulsive is that critics said the same thing about TR, and look how he turned out. But Teddy was just the tonic America thirsted for at the time. Unfortunately for McCain, a financial crisis requires something that goes down more smoothly.
That would be Cousin Frank. It may be that McCain has been using the wrong Roosevelt as his role model. FDR was dramatic and improvisational, but the effect was calming. On the night of his 1933 Inauguration, as the financial system imploded, this Roosevelt refused to cancel the Inaugural Ball. The next day, while closing the banks, FDR found some time amid the chaos to work on his stamp collection. Reporters found "no atmosphere of tension" at the White House as a smiling FDR suggested they use the festive term "bank holiday." They did.
Joe Biden referred last week to Roosevelt's going on television in 1929 to calm the country. Of course FDR wasn't president in 1929 and TV hadn't been invented. But the comparison is apt. A credit crisis, millions of potential foreclosures, philosophical differences over the role of government and the market—many of the issues are the same, even if today's crisis is less advanced (so far). The biggest difference from the banking crisis of 1933 is that we haven't yet chosen which candidate we want to confront it.
I saw an old friend recently who told me her father was embarrassed to admit that he gets a bit nervous if he boards an airplane and sees that the pilot is black. He's a "Rotary Club grandpa" from a generation that grew up using rotary phones in a different America. My friend's father is still undecided. He wants a steady hand on the wheel—a pilot who will chart a course, avoid turbulence and land the plane safely. That pilot likely has character. The important kind.
© 2008
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