NPR ran a great story the other day that I thought got to the heart of the problem. I won't summarize it - rather I encourage reading it in its entirety, here:
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/17/156872687/debt-debt-and-more-debt-is-democracy-to-blame?
It put me in mind of a few quotes attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, that 19th century student of American-style democracy:
“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.”
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
“America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
“I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.”
“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters."
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Oh, by the way: I acknowledge, along with Wikipedia, that the attribution of the first of those quotes is disputed. The truth of the observation in the statement, however, is not at all disputed. For further treatment of the subject, see:
http://www.tocqueville.org/pitney.htm
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler
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