The Cycle of Freedom

“A democ­racy can­not exist as a per­ma­nent form of gov­ern­ment. It 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.” –Fraser Tytler

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

For those of you keep­ing up, the United States of Amer­ica is now in its 231^st year of exis­tence. 231 years and I can’t help but agree with Sir Tytler that this nation has reached a point in its his­tory where most can­di­dates win elec­tion to office with promises of bring­ing the bacon back home to their dis­tricts. I think Amer­i­cans have sub­con­sciously real­ized that they can vote them­selves “largess” or money from the pub­lic trea­sury and as a result, the politi­cians are con­stantly pledg­ing more pub­lic funds (or invest­ments as they like to call it) in edu­ca­tion, health care, secu­rity, etc.

In the book, Sen. DeMint comes to nearly the same con­clu­sion. He 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.”

From what I can gather, Jim DeMint believes that our coun­try has reached the depen­dency stage of the Cycle of Free­dom. But DeMint also believes the cycle can be broke “if Amer­ica wakes up.” For my part, I believe Amer­ica is some­where between com­pla­cency and apa­thy, and rapidly approach­ing dependency.

Depen­dency, my friends, is the last stage before bondage.

So, my ques­tion for you is where do you think the USA is on the Cycle of Free­dom, and more impor­tantly, how do we break the cycle?

Read the New York Times: The New Amer­i­can Con­sen­sus; Gov­ern­ment of, by and For the Com­fort­able for another look at where our Cycle of Free­dom may be lead­ing us.

Cred­its:
Geor­gia Pol­i­tics Unfil­tered: Where is Amer­ica on the Cycle of Free­dom?
New York Times: The New Amer­i­can Con­sen­sus; Gov­ern­ment of, by and For the Com­fort­able
In Search of Amer­ica
People’s Cam­paign for the Con­sti­tu­tion