HT to Candice Watters, contributor from The Boundless Line, who quoted this in an article centered around a great explanation on our current economic situation over at Tony Woodleif's blog (who may have got it from someone else, but that's as far as I can keep track of where credit is due on this one).
This was written in 1897:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have 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 selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.
-Alexander Tyler
...And from the looks of what I'm reading and seeing in the news, the cycle is in full swing.
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