Redneck Review
No.16 8/10/15
Recall the famous old saying quoted back in Review #3, that "Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them...," and Frederik Bastiat's prediction over150 years ago that governments which resort to LEGAL PLUNDER eventually find it impossible to plunder enough people to satisfy all who want some of the plunder, and so are forced to rely on borrowed money to keep everyone happy.
And in his book THE LAW, he claims that the new United States back around 1850 was already taking tiny bits from many who earned it, and giving it to a selected few. So with an eye on our ever growing $18 trillion debt, lets take a look at a conclusion reached by a historian of long ago.
About the time our first thirteen states adopted our new Constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of Athens, a Greek city state noted for its pure democracy some 2000 years ago:
"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 themsellves 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."
This same information I came across 50 years ago, called at the time the "Simpson Cycle," and at the time could be found in the Congressional Record.
Tyler continues, "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 year, those nations always went through the following cycle:
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 dependency, 8) From dependency back into bondage."
If we consider our country's birth date the 1776 Declaration of Independence, or the 1787 adoption of our Constitution, we find our nation is now over 230 years old! 
For over 40 plus years ago I used to ask my government students two questions: Is the cycle valid and an inevitable one..., and where would you put the U.S. at the time on the cycle? Invariably a hot discussion would develop on the question of validity, but almost without exception, the earlier students would place us at the abundance stage.
More recently however, after 1990, more and more students would argue that we were at or around the apathy or dependency stage! So I ask, readers.... what you think..., and further, are the notions of LEGAL PLUNDER, NOT YOURS TO GIVE, THE REVERSE ROBIN HOOD EFFECT, OUR NATIONAL DEBT, somehow related to your answer????
Jake Wren

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