200 years down, a few more to go.

I found this letter to the editor in today’s local paper interesting.

In 1787, about the time our Constitution was adopted by the original 13 states, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh named Alexander Tyler wrote about the fall of the Athenian republic some 2,000 years earlier.

He stated that, “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 they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those 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.”

Hemline University School of Law Professor Joseph Olson, of St. Paul, Minn., believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Tyler’s definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

If you listen to the speeches of the presidential candidates, promising everything from lower taxes or increased entitlements — or even both — there appears to be a confirmation of those sentiments. Will we be saying goodbye to the U.S. in 10 to 20 years?

There is no doubt that complacency and apathy are rampant in our country.  Add in a silent invasion from our southern border into the equation and the picture even gets gloomier.