Thursday, March 15, 2007

Interesting Reading

Been at my Grandparents for the past week. Got bag Wed. and have been catching up on news and such. Ran across this little gem that I thought I would share with y'all.

Oh, I have a new gallery up on my site from my week at Culebra. Here is the Link.


"About the time the original thirteen US 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"


It is said that The US "Democracy" is on number 6 on that list.

Kind of makes one think, no?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

that would be the path of the upper classes, and in the US, the white upper classes. everyone else has lived in bondage and/or apathy for the entire 200 (or 500) years.

phun N gab and the Gay Circus Elves said...

I wasn't the only one who thought the US was going down hill

Josue' said...

The Culebra pics are nice. It is truly a shame that every year that passes will lead to changes there that look nothing like it was when we were kids...
:(

Xcott said...

If civilization cycled between these eight stages, and you had to choose which stage you'd live in...

I guess I'd choose 5 or 6, because it has better infrastrucure, better medical science, etc.

It would be cool to live in exciting times, but if I had to live in exciting times and die of asthma, then no.