why democracy fails (and the fatal sequence)

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.