04-08-09, Sue Sarkis Comments on the Glendale April 7, 2009 Election

04-08-09, Sue Sarkis Comments on the Glendale April 7, 2009 Election

It appears that less than 20,000 Glendale residents took the time to vote yesterday. That is less than ten percent of our population. No wonder the country is falling apart. No wonder Glendale is on the verge of bankruptcy. What will such an apathetic approach to our community bring?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

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 due to 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 aka the Tytler Cycle or Fatal 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.

Where do we stand in this sequence? How much longer can we exist?

Sue Sarkis