How Long Do We Have?

Apparently this article, which has circulated on the Internet since 2000, is favored by conservatives and, although Barbara Mikkelson and team at Snopes.com have not researched the quotes and data, they have included research information submitted by contributor, Mike Powell of Kennewick, WA, who disputes some data and to whom quotations in the article are attributed. Despite these disputes, which seem plausible, logically, it's difficult to find fault with the sequential progression from bondage... back to bondage, and the effect of an escalating voting block of citizens who rely on public welfare. It seems obvious that the second to last paragraph regarding 'amnesty to illegal immigrants' was added recently to this article. Even so, the estimates presented in "How Long Do We Have?" --sound about right. And 'apathy' is dangerous.

Isn't it odd that the disputes don't deal with the meaning of the quotes or the probability of the eight steps but only that 'the words' cannot be pinned to the stated author or the likely Professor Titler?

How Long Do We Have?
Received via email
Status: "Multiple" at Snopes.com
Author Unknown

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.

Please pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

Notes:
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." ["When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic." — Benjamin Franklin]

See Why Democracies Fail! at J.A.I.L. News Journal [Judicial Accountability Initiave Law]
, May 8, 2004