How close is the US to a full blown Dictatorship?
'A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, 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 dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.'
This has been attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, Alexis de Tocqueville, R. G. LeTourneau and others. It is likely that it is actually two quotes, put together. Parts of it show up in printed record as far back as 1950, when the "Fatal Sequence" portion was cited in a speach by Eugene E. Wilson at a special United Nations Convocation at Hillyer College in Hartford, Connecticut. But regardless of the quote's origin, it is interesting to note how accurate it details the past and how much further we have progressed along that predicted line, since it first appeared in modern recorded history, in 1950.
We urge you not to be concerned with the authorship of this quote, but to focus upon the truth that is in the words. I believe that we can stop this "Fatal Sequence", but not the way we are going.
Replies
There hasnt really been a democracy on earth.
Democracy is an egalitarian form of government in which all the citizens of a nation together determine public policy, the laws and the actions of their state, requiring that all citizens (meeting certain qualifications) have an equal opportunity to express their opinion. In practice, "democracy" is the extent to which a given system approximates this ideal, and a given political system is referred to as "a democracy" if it allows a certain approximation to ideal democracy. Although no country has ever granted all its citizens (i.e. including minors) the vote, most countries today hold regular elections based on egalitarian principles, at least in theory.
Notice how it say ALL citizens. What country asks ALL its citizns for their input on ALL subjects? NONE is the answer, therefore NONE have had true democracy. There is representative and other "forms" of democracy, however as your blog points out they have not worked. So to say democracy odoesnt work without an ACTUAL model to work fom for experience is sorts of silly dont ya think. Perhaps we should try a REAL deomcracy where ALL are involved in the decisions from the smallest babe to the wisest old person. THEN we can decide if it doesnt work or not. Another point of failure you are attributing to democracy has nothing to do with democracy and that is capitalism, the very definition of is to screw the other guy for profit. So we live here in north america in a dog eat dog capitalist society that pretends to be democratic and "for the people" when we have seen through proof that these two systems dont go together and arent even being used as intended.