Life Cycle of a Country

About the time our original 13 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 
prior.

"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 that they can vote themselves generous 
gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the 
majority always votes 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 worlds greatest civilizations from 
the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During 
those 200 years, these 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 believes the United States is now 
somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of 
Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 
40 percent of the nation's population already having reached 
the "governmental dependency" phase.