Was Alexander Tyler right in his assertion?

[luther]

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: "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 that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. >From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always 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 complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
The Obituary follows:

Born 1776, Died 2012
It doesn't hurt to read this several times.
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in
St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning
the last Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory
McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.
Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low
income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
"complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of
democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population
already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million
criminal invaders called illegal's - and they vote - then we can say
goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

Waiting for the insults rather than you bothering to think and consider.

I will appeal deletions.

[favian]

The original email was about Gore/Bush in the 2000 election, not Obama/McCain in 2008, so the numbers are all wrong. For one thing, Obama won 28 states (not 19) and McCain won 22 (not 29).

Then the Scottish guy has the wrong name and never wrote anything like that, and the US professor never did either. The Murder rates are wrong, too. So is the conclusion since the numbers are all wrong.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp