oder:
Aus der Geschichte lernen .... ?
In 1787, 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 due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the worlds 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;
- spiritual faith to great courage;
- courage to liberty;
- liberty to abundance;
- abundance to complacency;
- complacency to apathy;
- apathy to dependence;
- dependence back into bondage."
The Federal Republic of Germany is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
"Apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom." - adaptiert nach einer Information von John G.
