How long do we have?

Question

How Long Do We Have?
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 Faith to 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: Gore: 21 Bush: 29
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000 Bush: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million Bush: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2 Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.

Gore's 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 illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

Answer 1

I'd say we're reaching #6 on his scale. We're going from complacency to apathy. Elect someone like the Carpetbagger in 2008 and we're going to hit #8 very quickly.

Answer 2

The USA has its problems that is for sure. Take a good look at Europe. France, germanym englandm and some others have become so used to having everything provided for them that it is now nearly impossible to maintain this care from cradle to grave idea. Some nations are still rich enough to keep it going for a while longer and some are in real trouble now.

The USA is a long way from that position. People in the USA produce twice what most do in the wealthier European states do.

The EU will fall long before the USA does. It will be and has been the USA that has kept Europe rather free of wars for over sixty years and now they seem to think they are owed everything.

Sooner or later every nation that atains the state opf power will decline and another will take the honor.

Great Briton not very long ago had colonies all around the globe. France was a major power and even spain was a power to contend with. So you see things do change and Europe is still in the decline but most likely will reverse that trend before this century is over.

The Europeans do not even know what is but they will one day. Russia is flexing its muscles again and has the resources to do it.

So much more that will come to be.

Answer 3

This is brilliant, although I'm sure it'll be blasted and someone will say something about Bush.

I think we're almost up to 8.

Answer 4

Not nearly as long as we think we do. Every "empire" has thought it was self-perpetuating and immortal. Every "empire" has eventually fallen.

Answer 5

hopefull another 200 hundred years..