democracy doesn't work... (according to my cousin)
The $85B cuts required due to sequestration for this year is going to be
done gradually and doesn't affect Social Security or the medical
programs which is where the real adjustments have to be made to rein in
the long term costs. If you are aware of what is happening in Europe
where austerity is cutting back gov't programs, the people are
protesting in the streets. Our politicians may be unable to agree on
reducing govt spending until such time as when the gov't can't pay as in
Europe and riots break out.
Someone wrote a book on the rise and fall
of nations and it proves that history repeats. People and politicians
are programmed to repeat mistakes of the
past. There will always be a majority of people who wants something
without working and politicians who pander to these people in order to
be elected. This is why democracy has never worked because it is the
rule by the majority.
(and
according to Joseph Farah)
It pains me when I hear President Bush and so many others talk about the need to spread democracy around the world.
America's founders knew what a rotten and corrupt system of
government democracy was and did everything in their power to ensure our
country would never become one.
Why is democracy rotten and corrupt?
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the
public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over
loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age
of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual
truth, 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 dependence, from
dependence back again to bondage."
Even though no one is certain who first spoke or penned this statement, truer words were never uttered.
(nobody knows where the statement came from?)
from
wikianswers
The truth is that despite their frequent use, the above text actually
has its origins in two separate and independent quotes, and the author
of the first half is, to date, unknown. With regard to the first quoted
paragraph, the Library of Congress'
Respectfully Quoted writes,
"Attributed to ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER, LORD WOODHOUSELEE. Unverified."
The quote, however, appears in no published work of Tytler's.
And with
regard to the second, the same book says "Author unknown. Attributed to
Benjamin Disraeli. Unverified."
Looking further down the google search results, it is apparent that the above wikianswer was writtten
by Loren Collins.
Frequently, "Why Democracies Fail" is quoted alongside "Fatal Sequence,"
often as a single passage attributed to Professor Tytler/Tyler. But
all indications
point to the two having separate origins. Firstly, unlike "WDF," "Fatal
Sequence" is attributed to a wide variety of authors. In addition to
Tytler/Tyler
or Anonymous, I have seen the quote credited to Benjamin Disraeli
(1804-1881), Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994),
Davis Paschall
(1911-2001), Bernard Weatherill (1920-present) and Robert Muntzel (?-?).
Secondly, while I have tracked both quotes back to the mid-20th
century, the first
instance I have found of them used together was in 1979.
But the person who appears to be the actual author of this passage is
none of the men named above. They were not born from the mouth or pen
of a political
leader or historian or famous author. Rather, they would seem to be the
words of Henning Webb Prentis, Jr., President of the Armstrong Cork
Company.
... These facts lead me to suspect that these quotes were probably coined by
separate individuals in the first half of the twentieth century, and
I'm comfortable
in concluding that Henning W. Prentis, Jr. is the author of the Fatal
Sequence, unless further earlier evidence comes forward. In the
original version of
this article, when the evidence was inconclusive as to the author of
either quote, I wrote that the authors of each half were
most likely not famous persons or respected scholars, but rather just
private political thinkers who got their words in print, and whose words
then happened
to strike a chord in others. The identification of Mr. Prentis as the
author of FS bolsters this interpretation; the Fatal Sequence was not
coined by a
political figure or noted historian, but rather the president of a cork
company. The passage of time merely encouraged quoters to attach an
author's name
that strengthened the authority behind the words.
And that is where the vice of misattribution lies. Perhaps the words
speak the truth of democratic governments; or perhaps they do not. But
either way,
attributing the words to a scholar who never spoke them is to lend to
them an authority and reliability that they do not deserve. Quotations
should not be given fictitious attributions merely to lend credence to
the messages they impart. To do so is to favor
persuasiveness over accuracy, and to sacrifice truth for the sake of
image.
