Thoughts to Ponder

Seth at Hard Astarboard has posted some sobering thoughts about the future of democratic governments. According to 18th century history professor Alexander Tyler:

"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 due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

Sounds like a familiar scenario... Furthermore:

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.

During those 200 years, these 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 "

Apathy certainly exists, especially among the youth here in the US. Statistics point that many of them don't bother to vote, or even read the news.

The post further delineates interesting statistics regarding the 2000 Election:

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election.

Population of counties won by:

Gore: 127 million

Bush: 143 million

Square miles of land won by:

Gore: 580,000;

Bush: 2,427,000

States won by

Gore 19;

Bush: 29

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 tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in
government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."

From this information we see the roots of apathy and dependence firmly entrenched in our land. Where will it lead us?

UPDATE

I just found out that the stats for the murder rates are incorrect. According to Snopes it reads as follows:

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), in the year 2000 the national murder rate was about 5.5 per 100,000 residents. Homicide data by county for 1999 and 2000 can be downloaded from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NAJCD), and the counties won by Gore and Bush can be identified using the county-by-county election results made available by CNN. (The NACJD provides not only the number of reported murders for each county, but also the population for each.) The average murder rate in the counties won by Gore vs. the rate in the counties won by Bush can be determined from this data.

By calculating the murder rate for each county and then taking the averages, we find a murder rate (defined as number of murders per 100,000 residents) of about 5.2 for the "average" Gore county and 3.3 for the average Bush county. But since people, rather than counties, commit murders, a more appropriate approach is to calculate the total number of murders in the counties won by each candidate and divide that figure by the total number of residents in those counties. This more appropriate method yields the following average murder rates in counties won by each candidate:


Gore: 6.5
Bush: 4.1

There is a distinct difference between these two numbers, but it is nowhere near as large as the quoted e-mail message states (i.e., 13.2 for Gore vs. 2.1 for Bush). Note that the average of these two figures is 5.3, which, as expected, is very close to the reported national murder rate of 5.5.

H/T Indigo Red