The prescience of Alexis de Tocqueville.....

[marmar]

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."



Too late? :scared:

[texastoast]

1. Facinating thinker

I wish I coulda known him.

Meanwhile, convenience rules. So as long as things remain easy, most Americans will not acknowledge the bribery.

[NYC_SKP]

2. From bondage... to liberty... to abundance... to complacency... back to bondage.

This piece has been attributed to various individuals, but it's original source is uncertain.

About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution in 1787, at the beginnings of this great country, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, pondered the fall of the Athenian Republic around 2000 years earlier. From his research, he speculated that:

"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 to bondage.

http://www.morganhilltimes.com/opinion/231689-how-long-before-americas-democracy-goes-from-complacency-to-apathy

:patriot:

[burning rain]

4. Careful with that stuff -- some of those smell like right-wing talking points...

contemptuous attitude toward citizens as layabouts who just want to be paid for breathing. Don't get too taken with smooth bromides...

[Occam Bandage]

6. Its "original source" isn't uncertain; it's a pro-Bush/anti-Gore email that was sent around in 2000.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp

[NYC_SKP]

7. The snopes debunking seems to have more to do with the statistics and other parts

of the email.

The passage that I cited has none of these.

The snopes article doesn't seem to discuss them, and this is why I call it unattributable.

I really doubt that it was made up just for the bushie email.

[Occam Bandage]

8. If not made up specifically for the Bushie email, it was made up for a similar purpose.

It's been sent back and forth across the Internet a dozen times, always with the same author, and yet nobody has ever been able to find out who actually wrote it. It's the same "our faith gives us our liberty/strength, and we're losing our faith and therefore our society is on the brink of failing" garbage that religious fundamentalists have shouted for centuries.

[NYC_SKP]

10. Others have looked into it. It may go back as far as 1959.

But before I go into that, I'm going to stand by my observation.
That any part of what I quoted was included in an RW talking points email doesn't necessarily there aren't valid points in it.
Look at our spoiled society, led to believe by marketers that how we look and what we own is what matters, not how we treat other people. More fucking people vote on American Idol than in elections.
Those in power WANT IT TO BE THIS WAY!
Become complacent, feel better by buying more.
And then all of a sudden we are all in debt up to our eyebrows as our benefits dissolve and government does less and fucking less for us.
And we have to work longer hours for more of our lives to ever see less toward the end.
It sounds a lot like bondage to me, and much of it due to the apathy and complacency many in America felt during the good times.
So, yes, From bondage... to liberty... to abundance... to complacency... apathy... to dependence... back to bondage.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, as to the attribution to the quote, as I said, it's uncertain who said these things and when.

Others have looked into it. It may go back as far as 1959. But, like anything on the net, I can't vouch for the veracity of this writer:

The earliest usage I have discovered of "Why Democracies Fail" is from May 3, 1959. It appeared on page 35 of The New York Times Book Review, in the "Queries and Answers" column. The relevant portion of the column, which was first among that day's queries, read as follows:

F.R.K. wants to know where the following paragraph was taken from: "A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only last until the citizens discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that the Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, to be followed by a dictatorship, and then a monarchy."

One must imagine, then, that the quote predated May 1959, as it is doubtful that F.R.K. was inquiring of a quote of his own creation. However, no answer to this query was provided in the columns of the following weeks, although New York Times readers appeared quite able in citing sources for obscure poems and quotes. Professor Tytler's name was nowhere to be found.

Tytler's name is again absent when the quote was used in a Sep. 27, 1961 speech by John E. Swearingen. Rather, Swearingen attributed the quote to a much more famous historian:

In a quotation attributed to the French author, Alexis de Tocqueville, the dangers of loose fiscal policy were stated as follows: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury."

http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler1.html

Now, maybe Loren Collins is a whacko, but unless I go to the main branch of the NY public library or to the US Library of Congress, I don't think I'm going to get to the bottom of it.

[Enrique]

11. they do that

make up fake quotes that were supposedly said by Lincoln or Washington. I hadn't seen Tocqueville until now, it's a nice touch.

[roseBudd]

3. this is a favorite of wingnuts...

My question is, what makes whomever said this, a sage

and what democracies failed because of taxation?

[burning rain]

5. Spoonerisms & their like bubble up eternal.

`

[votingupstart]

9. so what are the modern day bribes being offered? nt

[Oregone]

12. "In a Democracy, the people get the government they deserve"

:)