"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government." ????

[bobbieinok]

http://yin.arts.uci.edu/~players/RF2/script.html#0

"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."

--Lord Alexander Tytler

found this as the beginning of an interesting performance site: the Roman Project

[spooked911]

1. so... we're about at complacency and apathy, right?

Certainly the fiscal policy is falling apart...

Good but scary quote.

[tabasco]

2. Gullible people is the real problem.

Just look at all the working class people that vote republican because of the tax cuts (not realizing that state/local taxes will make up the difference for them, while the rich continue to find tax free havens for their money, and corporate welfare flows like a river).

[BlueEyedSon]

3. No, the ruling elite manipulating the masses is the prob.

[xchrom]

4. i think the masses are quite willing to cooperate.

this isn't the dark ages -- millions of your fellow citizens have put the blinders on and the ear plugs in -- it's not that they don't know better -- they want to have things their own way.
like the elite.

[BlueEyedSon]

6. It's easier than the dark ages, they have FNC now.

[tabasco]

8. Easily manipulated = gullible.

I think we're saying the same thing.

[BlueEyedSon]

10. No one is saying it's easy. It takes an enormous and expensive

infrastructure.

To your point about "gullible": it doesn't hurt that between the sorry state of public education and the rise of faith-based everything, people hardly know how to think anymmore...

[tabasco]

11. I see what you mean. But as long as we have super-rich ...

who would be kings, we will have this problem. It seems that we have to learn the same lesson every couple generations! Unbridled capitalism needs reined in. The distribution of wealth is egregiously unfair. We have lost control of our government. What next??

Can we affect change without a complete social breakdown? I wonder.

[xchrom]

5. i don't entirely disagree with that.

greed{oh and to you fucked up freepers who just MIGHT be trolling here -- i am so not talking about the poor} makes the citizenry break any reasonable social compact over time.

unless you educate at extraodinarily high levels -- but can you imagine the elite of any civilization puting up with that for long?

i'm not sure that A} i believe in democracy.
B} i don't know that it's a rip roaring success -- what's come along to compare it to -- reasonably that is?

[Seansky]

7. What would Jefferson say? And based on history, this parragraph

practically sums up any society in its entirety...but since the cycle seems perpetual (until we have an alternative to money and its value) we'll continue doing what we are doing today...support * impeachment...

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

9. Altruism is the most basic building block of an advanced society

A society must decide as a whole that it will advance the cause of the poor, the weak, the old , the uneducated and the sick. our taxes are not being put to good use. All Americans should have a guarantee of the freedoms as defined under Roosevelt:

Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
Freedom of speech
Freedom of religion

No one has ever stated it better.