An email that I received today noted the following:  "About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new Constitution in 1787, Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, is said to have had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier" (or the writer could have been E.M. Blaiklock, or Alexis de Tocqueville, or any one of several others who may have written this quote):

 

“ '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. '”

 

I have used a different version of this quote on this blog several times.  But as we move toward the 2008 Presidential election, this quote (regardless of who wrote it) becomes even more meaningful.  The impact of the choice of President for the next four to eight years will be remarkable.  Either we will move further into the chaos of the welfare state and liberal fascism or we will move further toward the personal accountability, responsibility, and achievement that has been the hallmark of the Reagan and Bush Administrations.

 

In an effort to highlight the potential damage that could be done by a leftist President, the email highlights the quote above and highlights the make-up of the electorate voting in the 2000 election.  The person cited as the author is Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota.  He denies having written the article on his website. 

 

http://law.hamline.edu/node/784

 

Also, Snopes.com (Rumor has it) http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

has checked the numbers.  Whoever wrote the piece was a bit off on the numbers provided.  I am printing the figures offered in the bogus email and the figures derived by Snopes.com. (The Snopes figures are in italics.)

 

·        Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 (20) Republicans: 29 (30).  (According to Snopes, the discrepancy appears to be due to the fact that the original figures did not include the Florida and New Mexico vote counts.)

 

·        Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000. (Snopes found these numbers to be accurate.)

 

·        Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million. (Snopes found these numbers to be accurate.)

 

·        Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 (6.5), Republicans: 2.1 (4.1). (This discrepancy seems to be accounted for by different methods of calculation.  Snopes seems to make too much of this discrepancy since the result is actually the same as what was originally forwarded, just less dramatic.)

 

Snopes made no significant comment about the next section of the text.  “‘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 illegals 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 don’t know who wrote any of what I have quoted above.  BUT, the prediction of the demise of Democracy is one that needs to be taken very seriously.  And, despite a few discrepancies in the figures, someone was very accurate in denoting the remarkable distinction between the demographics of those voting Democrat and those voting Republican.  We need to keep this in mind as we vote in November, 2008.