Three years ago, I bought a book titled In Search of America co-authored by ABC News anchor Peter Jennings and longtime Time magazine writer Todd Brewster.
In the book, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint discusses a chart he put together based on the ideas of 19th century Scottish historian Sir Alex Fraser Tytler. The chart, aptly named the “Cycle of Freedom,” is derived from Tytler’s belief that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”
[A Democracy] can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Tytler concluded that the average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years, and that these nations went through the following cycle:
- From bondage to spiritual faith
- From spiritual faith to great courage
- From great courage to liberty
- From liberty to abundance
- From abundance to selfishness
- From selfishness to complacency
- From complacency to apathy
- From apathy to dependency
- From dependency back again to bondage
Sen. DeMint says, “When this country was being formed, the critics of democracy said it won’t be a permanent form of government because sooner or later people are going to figure out they they can vote themselves more benefits from government without paying for it.”
“They were right and that moment has come.”
The United States of America has been an independent nation for 232 years and at this point in our nation’s history, the American people have realized they can vote themselves “largess” or money from the public treasury. We see it happen every election cycle when candidates for public office either brag about the pork they’ve brought home to their constituents or pledge to bring home the bacon to their constituents.
Senator DeMint seems to believe that our nation has reached the stage of dependency but, he argues, the cycle can be broken if America wakes up.
A year ago, I thought America was somewhere between complacency and apathy, and rapidly headed towards dependency. Now, I think we’ve reached dependency which is the last stage before bondage.
So, the question on the floor today is how do we break this cycle?
I, for what it’s worth, think it begins by stopping the belief that we can continue to vote ourselves more benefits from the government without paying for it.
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Andre, I agree with you and Sen DeMint. I am not quite sure how we break this cycle, but we must… Usually voters don’t change course until they start feeling pain in their pocketbook.
This is one cycle that my knowledge of history indicates cannot be broken.
It seems that the best we can hope for is to mitigate the impact of the more negative phases, but even that may be a lost cause. And THAT, I will agree with Andre, begins by admitting that we have a problem.
As far as the stages go, I might go so far as to say we are already, in fact, in bondage. China holds more US currency than the US Treasury does, and American politicians are all too ready to give in to any special interest group that gives them enough money. Even solid American traditions like the Peach Bowl will give in to the corporate masters.
I agree that the cycle must be broken but it won’t be and that’s a damn shame. We have too many non-productive folks who are content to live an existence that depends on the labors of others. The mortgage meltdown is just the latest example. Banks and lending institutions were pressured to lend money to folks who couldn’t pay it back in a hundred years. I hate to be this cynical but we’re toast.
Andre,
I’d like you to contrast the beliefs you posted above with your view from this post:
http://www.peachpundit.com/2006/10/25/why-not-raise-georgias-minimum-wage/
Or even Obama’s belief that we must “spread the wealth”.
This cycle isn’t a problem just because the electorate can take money from the treasury. They can also take it from other private individuals, or they can shoot themselves in the foot by passing bills like the minimum wage (or printing a few trillion in bailout money) that, in an attempt to defy the laws of economics.
If you truly understand and believe what you posted above, there is no way you can support minimum wage laws, or attempts to redistribute wealth.
“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended the war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.” Barrack Obama
Obama ran as a be-all, cure-all, for-all to get elected and that’s what the hordes expect of him and government.
The “blame the voter” or the electorate concept has always been there with conservatives, although not necessarily the best “diplomatically” or politically IMHO. It’s easy to do. Been done before and all that. And I’m afraid people lose too much “cred” when they do nothing but finger pointing and “guarding the fort” when the question arises “What are conservatives defending”? The entire “truth to power” meme is completely lost on a large portion of Republicans these days.
This will probably be viewed as overly simplistic and unachieveable but we can start by refusing to elect people to office who will NOT observe the Constitution. I’m talking about the intent of the Constitution and not the tortured interpretation that allows the “general welfare” clause to be used to justify literally anything people in DC want it to mean. If we’d had representatives in DC for the last 50 years who respected the Constitution we would have NONE of the financial mess we have today because there is nothing in the Constitution that permits the federal govenment to bail out anybody or guarantee anyone a home loan.
In short, elect more Constitutionalists like Ron Paul and Paul Brown. Of course, that isn’t going to happen so, we’re toast.
Gee, why is it that the Democrat of the bunch has faith in the common person?
The idea of the fine young (ancient) Scotsman fails because people are not simply rational actors. If the discovery of getting “money for nothing” (which sounds more like a Wall Street than a Main Street lyric) was so inevitable as to be the downfall of a country, why has it not been discovered earlier? Why is it that there are so many conservatives that are pretty low on the food chain? Many, many liberals have asked themselves why so many people vote against their pocketbooks, and I’m sure you all know and resent the “What’s the matter with Kansas / bitter clinging to guns and religion” refrain quite well by now.
The reason is that self-reliance is a much desired virtue. It is probably more than a virtue, and a psychological need, which is to feel agency and power in one’s own life.
That is why the most popular social programs have been those focused on training or some kind of sweat equity, or other exchange of time and effort (which everyone has) for capital (which everyone does not, and many private capital holders fear lending to many different classes of people). That’s why Clinton and Obama have focused as much on “working hard and playing by the rules” as they have on the themes of inequality in this country.
Homo economus, and a great number of the economic laws founded upon that construct, is so overly simplified as to approach academic fraud. There have been myriad corrections, which is why you have economists across the entire political spectrum (as opposed to climatologists, who are pretty unanimously converged as to a single general verdict). Many constructs now take psychology and social forces into account along with the selfish maximizing precept. Oddly enough, the most “efficient” maximizers are usually classified as sociopaths.
The Democratic ideal is not for people to sit and home and collect a paycheck for doing nothing (although when we all have replicators and nanobots that can construct all of our material desires on command, that may be worth revisiting). The ideal is for everyone to be able to spend their allotted time at a job or working their own small business or whatever, and then having the resources at the end of the day to see to their families in a clean and safe community. That’s pretty much it. There are a lot of complicated tools and policies to get from here to there, but that’s pretty much the bull’s eye.
“In short, elect more Constitutionalists like… ”
Did you guys have a meet up last night? I swear if this becomes one of those days that I’m going to have to switch from coffee to something stronger.
Yep, it was at Rising Fawn Hardware near the Post Office.
Icarus,
I don’t believe in redistributing the wealth, and to tell you the truth, I felt discomforted after hearing “spread the wealth around” emanate from Obama’s lips.
However, I don’t see a minimum wage increase as equating to the American people voting themselves “largess” or money from the public treasury.
The government is not arbitrarily handing out $6.55 every hour to people who aren’t working. The government isn’t guaranteeing everyone a job with an annual salary of $55,000. If that kind of policy were proposed, I’d be against it.
What the government is doing, though, is placing the minimum amount of money that anyone can be paid at $6.55 an hour so that people won’t be worked like a dog with little or nothing to show for it.
So, I’m against “spreading the wealth around” but I doubt someone will end up in a three-level home on two acres earning the minimum wage.
50 years? Politicans have been screwing up this country since 1865, er 1829, er 1785, er 1776……..
This model is too simplistic in that it makes the assumption that we’re all in the same cycle at the same moment and that we’re not each able to be in multiple cycles. The obvious stratification of our socio-economic classes makes it clear that we have different folks in different stages.
It’s not going to be “the poor” or “the rich” that are solely responsible for our decline. It’s going to be the folks who are always trying to get a little more than they have earned and that happens with equal frequency at both ends of the scale: welfare or narrowly targeted tax codes; handouts or industry subsidies; free health care or unregulated insurance companies and sweetheart deals for big pharma; federal housing or real estate speculators; etc. Douglas Adams had a model for it in the Hitchhiker’s Guide – it’s the middle men who do practically nothing of real value but suck the profits out.
We’ve created entire industries from subtracting value from the system. And, we glorify those institutions by declaring them to be the “smart guys”.
Any student of the history of civilization is quite aware that the USA was never a sustainable idea but it was a really nice ride. I’ll probably be dead before “the fall” but, there will be a fall.
In the immortal words of Pogo “We have met the enemy and they are us.” (or something like that)
I’ve always said that Fascism is the best form of government….It’s a shame the Army never went through with the Newburg Conspiracy. I guess for now I’ll just continue to be a moderate Republican.
Yeah, I know it’s been going on longer than 50 years but I’d settle for that if we could find Mr. Peabody’s wayback machine and go back to fix it.
This, really, must be the most gullible posting site anywhere. Just because Jim DeMentalcase quotes Sir Alex’s “belief” and cites Sir Alex’s opinion chart does not make it true. All the stages are bracketed by squishy, open-to-individual-definition terms so as to be meaningless except for sophomores arguing into the night in the dorm. Take Sir Alex’s musings as just that and consider them seriously but not as holy writ. Sheesh!
France was & is a good example of the above cycle. There are other examples as well.
Whereas our founders agreed there must be acknowledgement of God and his providence on our birth as well as our future prosperity – the prevailing thought in France was that a nation could realize the age of reason through man’s best efforts.
Our founders believed these truths to be self evident (God given, all men created equal, neither man nor the state gives them, freedom liberty = prosperity, the sin nature of man corrupts when he is in power-therefore checks & balances).
In other words, you would have to be an idiot or extremely hard headed not to see them plainly! (self evident) These concepts were radical to the existing thought on governmental function & purpose. (The British knew that the preachers in America told people this stuff so they imprisoned preachers. Most preachers died in prison. They also believed these ideas would never work & the colonies would come back to them.)
We experienced blessings (even in the middle of hard national times like the Civil War) while France experienced loss of freedom & great decline. History could be our greatest teacher (if we would not revise it) , but it appears we consistently will not learn from it.
Bondaage can manifest itself in many ways. Our national thinking is pretty much the same as what prevailed in France during that time.
Sometimes you have to have bondage for people to understand, get the message, and then turn to God.
Andre,
Thanks for the post!
Amen Bucky!
“Douglas Adams had a model for it in the Hitchhiker’s Guide – it’s the middle men who do practically nothing of real value but suck the profits out.”
Indeed. On the Kos I saw a reference to a fairly good piece on Alexander Hamilton and the American System of production that he founded. One of the core values was that capital was in service of value-creating production, rather than the other way around. The same idea of New Deal regulation follows this thread in that commercial banks were to serve as wells of reliable capital and thus take on rather safe bets and conservative portfolios. They would anchor the part of the economy that was established and working while the investment bankers were free to experiment around the edges in pursuit of higher profits. This came to a crashing, smoldering ruin at the hands of ideologues like Phil Gramm who pursued deregulation for its own sake (and there are Democrats who also fall under this label). The bedrock banks were integrated into the speculation games and thus we had “too big to fail.”
In the push toward monetization of all outcomes, we have to some degree taken our eyes off of the ball to real wealth. Real wealth is embodied either in things or in the power that comes with a fat bank account. That power is the ability to provide food, shelter, and a wide variety of toys to people to do your bidding, whether it is to guard your mansion, fly your private jet, or set forth and attempt to produce the brand new wonder-widget you have conceived of for sale.
This theory from Sir Tytler always comes up after elections.
Funny how that works, isn’t it.
I remember when it started circulating in ’60 after Kennedy got elected…from an NYTimes article. Then it got popular again during Goldwater’s presidential campaign.
I am not the only to dispute this theory of his. Going back 2000 years or more, the confederated republics of the mediterranean come to mind. That loose affiliation of small independent states. This is where a great majority of “democratic” governments are traced back to.
Many were direct, or pure, democracies…unlike our indirect form of democracy. We abandoned the Articles because our nation was already beginning to suffer some of the same consquences that the small democratic nations of the ancient mediterranean suffered in their extraordinarily short life spans. Many existed for merely a decade. Then they fell to stronger nations or were often beseiged by one of their own citizen meglomaniacs.
Regardless, comparisons can hardly be drawn between the two.
Not that one of the “predictions” is becoming true…everything from our modern forms of diplomacy, federalism, and warfare help abate the risk of a country as large and important as ours from falling into the hands of a foreign government.
For the record, SW GA libertarian, Saudi Arabia owns more of America than China. God forbid we lose those petro resources.
Like I said before, this little theory comes up all the time. It does not make it true. Tytler never even published this. It is disputed whether he even wrote it.
I see a bright future if we look at only one dynamic and help foster change. Kids.
Hope starts with children. Perhaps the greatest benefit Obama may offer the US, is a message of hope to all men who do not stick around to raise their offspring. All men, but most directly the African American community which has suffered generational suppression because one-parent kids have a much more difficult time in avoiding the pitfalls of drugs, gangs, poor education.
This is not a slam against Blacks or single moms, understand that clearly, but it is tough enough getting a kid through their teens with two parents. Turning around the lives of ‘at-risk’ kids will pay many multiple benefits.
I see a ‘viral buzz’ about how hi-hop may offer a newer, less angry message, post-Obama. Perhaps that is a positive signal that a hopefulness in success and achievement is entirely possible.
News on almost every front is negative, and we must remain steadfast in our resolve not to abdicate our freedoms and greatness to the ill-winds of crisis. Warren Buffet told Rham recently, “Never let a true crisis go to waste.”
Todays posts by both Icarus and Andre prove to me, with clear and convincing evidence, this Union shall survive. Too many smart, hardworking people, with too much to lose shall not let our American experiment fail.
“The entire “truth to power” meme is completely lost on a large portion of Republicans these days.” Then change it, satandammit.
Pogo was right, but we are able to change. Whether we choose to is another matter.
Goldwater,
Did you do the voice over for the original Mr. Grinch ?
“The ideal is for everyone to be able to spend their allotted time at a job or working their own small business or whatever, and then having the resources at the end of the day to see to their families in a clean and safe community. That’s pretty much it.”
Ah… Utopia. Keep dreaming, Odin. To succeed, one must fight and work hard. What in the world is “their allotted time?” And why make an effort during my “allotted time” when I know Big Daddy Gov is gonna make sure I have the resources I need at the end of the day? My “allotted time” has been anywhere from 8.5 to 10.5 hours a day recently, and I’m depending on my own effort and God’s help to make sure I have enough resources at the end of the day. Someone has to make the effort to keep Big Daddy Gov in business.
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“Hope starts with children. Perhaps the greatest benefit Obama may offer the US, is a message of hope to all men who do not stick around to raise their offspring.”
Hope probably was the reason we put low-income people into homes they couldn’t afford by mandating quotas for those mortgages. I wonder how much this hope helped those people when their homes were foreclosed and they had to move out?
Emotional ideals and the policies they produce are faulty. We just can’t reverse them once they fail, because of the cries of the dependent and the desire of politicians to get re-elected. Principle and sound reason make good policy, but we won’t be seeing any of that from Washington in the near future.
Too much of America IS dependent on government, and our safety & sovereignty are in as much danger today as they have ever been. We may see bondage much more quickly than we imagine possible.
So it’s about bondage, eh, Jizzum? Your wear the cuffs or does Konop? Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.
Um…
they have bondage and spiritual faith in the wrong places.
Swap them, and it makes perfect sense.
“our safety & sovereignty are in as much danger today as they have ever been. We may see bondage much more quickly than we imagine possible.”
Wow.
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