I recall thinking, in 2004, that the reelection of the lesser Bush spelled doom for our country. Within a short time, I came to realize just how naïve that idea was. In fact, it betrayed an absurd lack of confidence in the robustness of the democratic system. For this, I am a bit embarrassed. I have seen emails passed around that sounded like this one (from urbanlegends.about.com):


“At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

“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 that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over 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, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.”

Aside from the attribution probably being bullshit (or, for that matter, the entire thing demonstrably being bullshit), I wonder at the absurdity of the premise. The basic claim made by anyone who spends their free time forwarding such tripe is this:

Other people (certainly not ourselves) are parasites, living off the fruits of our labor.

A modern day Cassandra, the email forwarder frantically issues the warning to anyone willing to listen (and many who would really rather not). That warning, of course, is that the moochers and looters are going to destroy our country. If anything, though, we should recall that the tragicomic performance of the Bush, Jr. Administration did not bring down this nation. Indeed, the debts rung up during that time period are the source of the silly “fiscal cliff” off which the Republican House has been threatening to drive us. But no one on the planet questioned the safety of American national securities (except Standard & Poor, who took time out from helping its corporate partners defraud consumers to give Congressional saboteurs political points at the cost of many millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers). Our country was able to withstand elective wars drenched in corruption and criminal incompetence. It survived the use of high positions in important agencies as sinecures for the benefit of ridiculously unqualified political operatives. And now the claim is made that the paltry sums spent on social safety nets will ruin us.

Someone should inform the English civilization that its having failed to collapse multiple times since the reign of William the Conqueror is only postponing the inevitable. Also, I must not have been paying attention the horrifying day late in the Reagan Presidency when America collapsed.