The American Experiment's Timetable

This was emailed to me. It's been circulating on the internet for some time (I love the internet) and according to another internet source, is ficticious in its origin. Just disregard the names and cited texts and enjoy. The election and state data numers are reasonably accurate as far as I can tell.

I don't agree with the timing -or necessarily the result - but the writer makes some interesting points.

How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen statesadopted their new constitution in 1787, AlexanderTyler, a Scottish history professor at theUniversity of Edinburgh , had this to say about thefall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 yearsearlier:

"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 Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Gore: 19; 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 illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

This was written by a true conservative... If not an honest one.

Ayn Rand had an interesting theory about the end of democracy and socialism's part in that end - that she used in writing Atlas Shrugged. She suggested that the people who carry this world will just one day give up and retreat when their "losing battle" is no longer profitable.