[Main Street]

"A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for the candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest democratic nations has been 200 years. Each has been through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith.
2. From faith to great courage.
3. From courage to liberty.
4. From liberty to abundance.
5. From abundance to complacency.
6. From complacency to selfishness.
7. From selfishness to apathy.
8. From apathy to dependency.
9. And from dependency back again into bondage."

- Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and politician, in a letter to a friend in 1857

[Williams]

Anyone who wants to understand the decline and fall of the Roman Empire should read the multi volume work of that name by Gibbon. There was a long history and many casts of characters. All the people who say "X" caused the fall of the Roman Empire don't know much about the actual history. There are MANY lessons to be learned from that history, but writing a list of "causes" and then deciding that America has the same "causes" ain't one of them. It is more a lesson about the nature of man.

[Williams]

And just what "democracies" was he talking about? Maybe some reference to ancient Athens? What democracies have gone from freedom to bondage in 200 years? Except for some unstable Third World long-term dictatorships that couldn't hack it as democracies, I can't think of any.

[Cincinatus]

Do you have a citation source for this quote? I've seen it many times, but attributed to different authors (the last time to someone named "Alexander Tyler"). If you could provide a source for this quote, I would be grateful -- I'd like to finally pin this down.