Alexander Fraser Tytler lived from 1748 to 1813. He was a professor of history at Edinburgh University. In his book, The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic, published in 1776, he made the following observation:

“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 followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

The historian, Gibbons, attributed the collapse of the Roman Empire to this same cause.

According to Tytler, there is a life cycle to the life of democracy. It is important to remember that his theory was based on his study of the great democracies of history, like Greece and Rome. He was published in 1776 before there was an American democracy.

Tytler’s life-cycle model runs as follows;

1. Bondage
2. Spiritual faith
3. Great Courage
4. Liberty
5. Abundance
6. Selfishness
7. Complacency
8. Apathy
9. Dependency
10. Back into Bondage

Although published before the Declaration of Independence, Tytler’s outline could have been published yesterday, and people would assume it was a thumbnail sketch of US history to the present day.

America was born out of bondage, but the Founding Fathers attempted to avoid falling into Tytler’s mold by creating a Republic instead of a pure democracy.

In a true democracy, the voting majority wins no matter what the question. In the American republic, only such things as were not already forbidden by Divine Law were open to public review.

In the American republic, the public could never hold a vote to repeal murder statutes, for example, because murder is forbidden by Divine Law. The Founding Fathers had great spiritual faith and great courage, which, when mixed together, produced the US Constitution, America’s assurance of Liberty.

With our Liberty came America’s great prosperity. With great Prosperity comes, according to the model, Selfishness.

The Roaring 20s, the first ‘Decade of Greed, ‘ brought with it the collapse of the Stock Market and the Great Depression. It also bankrupted the country. The American Republic became a pure democracy with the passage of the Banking Act of 1933.

The Banking Act was actually an admission of bankruptcy by the United States following the Crash of 1929. America’s gold assets were seized, private ownership of gold was declared a crime, and the gold collected was shipped to Europe to satisfy our creditors.

The US Republic became the Corporation of the United States, complete with a new flag — the one with gold fringes you see in federal office buildings.

The Secretary of the Treasury does not work for the United States but for our creditors, who are the foreign banking concerns that own the Federal Reserve, which is neither Federal nor is it a reserve. (I explain all this in detail in my book on the money trust. This is just a teaser, but it is fascinating stuff.)

Today, the courts are currently clogged with cases of corporate executives charged with stealing millions from stockholders, wiping out the life savings of working Americans, erasing pension funds, and destroying lives.

Tytler’s model goes on, with Selfishness breeding Complacency. If there were one word I’ve heard used more than any other to describe how it was that September 11 could have happened, it would be the word ‘Complacent.’

Out of Complacency comes Apathy.

Election 2000 was a case study in Apathy. Only a tiny fraction of the eligible electorate showed up at the polls.

From Complacency comes Dependency.

Entitlement programs create dependency. When the government wants to pass an unpopular bill, they invent some threat to some entitlement program, usually Medicare or Social Security. (Entitlement programs began in America as part of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” that closely followed the passage of the Banking Act of 1933.)

Political pundits call it ‘scare tactics,’ but the reason the tactics work is because of the dependence of the public on entitlement programs to stay afloat.

Which brings us to the last Stage of Tytler’s life cycle: Back into Bondage.

But centuries before Tytler, the Apostle John also foretold the collapse of civilization and its subsequent willing embrace of dictatorship and bondage — in the last days.

“And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Revelation 13:4).

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on October 21, 2003.

Original Article in Omega Letter Archives