"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."

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813).

"Nor were the superior classes in the actual enjoyment of a rational liberty and independence. They were perpetually divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues; and these maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money."[

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813)- Speaking of the Athenian Democracy.

"Another cause of revolution is difference of races which do not at once acquire a common spirit. A state is not the growth of a day. Hence the reception of strangers, in colonies either at time of their foundation or afterwards has generally produced revolution."

-Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), THE POLITICS, Book V

Yes, the history of the world teaches us that democracies generally only last a couple of centuries before they become financially and socially unstable and turn into a dictatorship or oligarchy in response to that instability. Peace and prosperity, an abundances of resources, lack of competition for same and lack of fear of conflict, leads to political decisions based on wasteful ‘r’ strategist instincts, which inevitably brings back conditions of ‘K’ (resource shortage, intense competition and danger). Multicultural/multiethnic countries don’t stay together for long either, not unless ruled by despotism, a ‘rod of iron’. It is becoming clear that the world’s oldest democracy, the United States of America, is fast approaching the end of its life cycle. Certainly a republic, a representative democracy, cannot hold together and move forward into the future unless its major political factions can agree on more things than they disagree about. And that is no longer the case in the 21st Century U.S.A.

“Our unofficial motto, once E pluribus unum, has beome E pluribus plura — out of many, many more. This is why we fight over everything, from life’s origin to politics to football to baking cakes to marriage to, even, what boys and girls are. It’s why everything ends up in court.”

“As for the end game, people with badly conflicting values trying to co-exist under the same roof will eventually go their separate ways — unless, as with bickering children, an iron hand keeps them in line. The large groups of people known as countries are no different. Unless something radically alters our cultural trajectory, as a nuclear blast might alter an asteroid’s, our fate is either dissolution or despotism.”

What will the post-U.S.A. North American continent look like politically? Where will the boundaries of the successor states be drawn? Who will rule in them? How will they rule?

December 18, 2017

The Decline and Fall of American Nationhood

By Selwyn Duke