If you count from the signing of the Constitution at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, July 4, 1787, we as a country are 235 years old. If you count from the shot heard ’round the world, we are 244. Either way, according to a Scotsman with an amusing name, we are overdue for being overturned.
Although occasionally attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, apparently it was Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813) who wrote, “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government… The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.”
Why is that do you ask? Greed, Tytler answers.
My goodness, can this be true? Has anyone in government discovered that the White House is a big, well-furnished ATM?
And Tytler adds, “it’s the economy, stupid.” That is, he says, “A democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
Let’s see… and if so, where are we on the continuum from democracy to dictatorship?
Again, Tytler, eighteenth-century laird and University of Edinburgh professor, explains, “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 selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
In his lectures, Tytler described the cycle he believed was inevitable. Belief in a better life and faith in fellow men leads to the courage to revolt against dictatorship. Winning the battle leads to liberty; freedom leads to abundance—not just an abundance of money, but also of energy and entrepreneurial efforts.
Democracies inevitably lead to abundance. Sounds good, but not so fast. There begins the downside of the cycle. Abundance leads to selfishness, complacency, and apathy. That, according to Tytler is the road to dependence and dictatorship. You know, all that abundance leads to a sort of smugness—we can do no wrong—and therefore why change anything—why actually regulate or prosecute the greed?
Are there representatives who have put aside their oaths of office to protect their self-interests? In that case, it would seem time to vote them out. Or are the rest of us too complacent or apathetic?
In fact, Tytler’s view of democracy was critical. While democracy never eradicates poverty, according to Tytler, even the “superior classes” did not have a “rational liberty and independence.” They were too often “divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues.”
Oh-oh, that sounds bad.
The demagogues “maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money.”
Good grief; sounds awful. You mean some demagogues develop schemes to lie to the public in order to trick them out of their money? Now who would do a thing like that?
Then these demagogues use that money to maintain their power and actually suppress the rights even of their doners. Impossible! Who would fall for that?
Now listen to this: Tytler said that the people flatter themselves believing that they are powerful and free, but these are words without meaning since the “elected governors” control who can vote, discouraging “disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery.”
Is the Tytler Cycle inevitable? Does democracy have an expiration date?
Tytler believed democracy was “a Utopian theory.” And yet it was reality for us; one that we enjoyed for 235 years. Is our patriotic spirit and love of freedom gradually but inevitably becoming corrupted? Isn’t this akin to saying human nature is fixed and immutable? Or can we change; can we be the masters of our fate?
If we wish to hold onto our form of government, we can vote. Moreover, we can work tirelessly to ensure others can vote. Organize against those that would limit the rights of others. Vote against any who rationalize, disenfranchise, and rollback civil rights.
Tytler said, the best in a nation “languishes and decays…It is a law of nature to which no experience has ever furnished an exception.”
And yet there are good people still fighting. There are brave souls pointing the way to follow our better impulses and to reach for a brighter future. Forget Tytler and look to those modern-style heroes—the ones who let go of personal ambition for the general good. Forget Tytler and remember Franklin—it is our Republic, and we can keep it. We can refute the conspiracy theories, eschew the lies, and vote out the greedy and selfish. We can choose—we can even choose wisely.
