I got this interesting email...

How Long Do We (the USA) 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 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 illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

maybe I should have posted this in the survival section...

Aloha, Without granting illegals amnisty, I will be greatly suprissed if thins last another 5 years as it is now.

Hi Aloha,


Idea of a perfect commonwealth , David Hume, The Age of Enlightenment, Scotland 1754

That email's been around for a little while. I'm glad you got it and passed it on. With that said....

We will last forever. We are going nowhere until the planet does.

Where is Rome right now? Vanished? Nope. Just different (with less territory).

If you're asking when our quality of life will change, that's a different question. It's been changing since the late 1400's and it won;t stop. At what acceleration depends on the choices we make and have been making. (DON'T get me started. Chris and Doug will certainly chime in and maybe ban me!)

We aint going nowhere. We just might not be going nowhere good.

The thing that threatens the integrity and stability of nations far more than anything else is irresponsible monetary policy. When oil starts being traded in currencies other than the dollar (which will happen in the near future) and foreign central banks weed some dollars out of their currency reserves things will get tricky. And thats just the tip of the iceberg. A detor nation with a service based economy and a weak, slightly unstable currency doesn't add up to a bright future. Everything I've read suggests the current path can only be maintained as long as foreign creditors are willing to loan us money. And not just to the fed. government but by buying US consumer debt. No one is looking forward to it but the party's gotta end sometime. It won't be the end of the US or anything even close, just a gradual tightening of US fiscal policy and a global shift in economic influence away from the US. Just my 2c.

great topic!

the email has been around for some time and is not entirely accurate.

go here for an accuracy check:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

i think we're at #6.

imho the average american is more interested in baseball / football / insert a sport here / than what our government is planning for the u.s. in iran. it could be the beginning of our downfall on the world stage.

great topic!

I'm not sure how to match the UK to that pattern. We've not really been a dictatorship since 1215.

I agree. Also, concerning the trading in other currencies, we will go to war over this faster than we will over nuclear weapons. Good post.

"If you do not change direction,you may end up where you are heading" -Lao Tzu