Choosing The Right Lane To Follow

In pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

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The Tytler Cycle Revisited by John Eberhard
In 2003 I became very interested in a theory developed by Scottish history professor Alexander Tyler in 1787, and wrote an article on it at the time, which ironically enough is now getting a lot of attention due to being linked to from Wikipedia. Tytler’s theory set forth a cycle that every democracy goes through, which goes like this. Tytler said the cycle starts out with a society in bondage. Then it goes in this sequence:

1.     Bondage

2.     Spiritual Faith

3.     Courage

4.     Liberty

5.     Abundance

6.     Selfishness

7.     Complacency

8.     Apathy

9.     Dependence
Then starting over with Bondage.  Tytler organized these items in a circle:

I was fascinated with this because to me it seemed to explain what we are going through as a country right now, where people are more interested in how they can somehow soak the system to get their free ride, than building anything. Clearly we are on the left side of this cycle, somewhere in the selfishness, complacency, apathy or dependence side.

Recently I found an article entitled “An American Tragedy” dated 12/16/08 by James Quinn, a financial writer and senior director of strategic planning for a major university. Most of the article is about disgraced investment guru Bernie Madoff, but a good chunk of it concerns the Tytler cycle and exactly where Quinn thinks we are in the cycle. Here's what Quinn has to say:

“The following quote attributed to Scottish history professor Alexander Tyler in 1787, seems to portray an accurate reflection of what has occurred during our 200+ years of existence as a democracy.

"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:

• 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

“These words were written two years before George Washington became our first President. There is so much truth in these words it makes me shudder, especially since we are clearly in stage 7. An honest appraisal of our country’s downward spiral is necessary to begin the process of redemption. We have continually voted ourselves increased benefits, dependent upon the printing presses of the Federal Reserve to sustain our country’s ponzi scheme. We have pawned our future and the bill will eventually come due. “The Great American Republic" “My assessment of the chronological sequence our democracy has progressed through, follows;

“From bondage to spiritual faith               (1760 to 1769)

• King George III becomes King of England
• Currency Act, Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Quartering Act, Townshend Act passed by Parliament
• Sons of Liberty formed by John Adams, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, among others.

“From spiritual faith to great courage     (1770 to 1783)

• Boston massacre
• Samuel Adams organizes the Committees of Correspondence
• Parliament passes the Tea Act
• Boston Tea Party
• The First Continental Congress
• Battle of Bunker Hill
• Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense
• Revolutionary War rages for six years
• British surrender at Yorktown
• Treaty of Paris ends Revolutionary War

“From courage to liberty                            (1784 to 1865)

• Constitutional Convention
• Constitution ratified by 13 states
• George Washington elected President
• Bill of Rights passed
• Fugitive Slave Act passed
• Louisiana Purchase
• Robert Fulton invents steamboat
• War of 1812
• Monroe Doctrine
• President Andrew Jackson battles bankers which leads to the Panic of 1837
• U.S. Mexican War
• California gold rush
• Compromise of 1850
• Dred Scott Decision
• Abraham Lincoln elected President
• Confederate states secede from the Union
• Emancipation Proclamation
• Civil War rages for four years
• Union is restored
• 13th Amendment abolishes slavery

“From liberty to abundance                                   (1866 to 1969)

• Civil Rights Act of 1866
• First Trans-Continental Railroad
• Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
• Industrial Revolution
• General Electric founded
• Spanish American War
• U.S. Steel founded
• Airplane invented
• Automobile invented
• Federal Reserve created
• World War I
• Great Depression
• New Deal programs implemented by FDR
• Golden Gate Bridge completed
• World War II
• Holocaust
• Atomic bomb used to end war with Japan
• Marshall Plan rebuilds Europe & Japan
• US emerges from the war as the only great economic power
• Cold War
• Korean War
• Interstate highway system built
• Civil Rights Movement
• John F. Kennedy assassinated
• Vietnam War
• Great Society programs implemented
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Martin Luther King assassinated
• Neil Armstrong walks on the moon

“From abundance to complacency                      (1970 to 1989)

• Roe vs Wade
• President Nixon resigns in disgrace
• Oil embargo
• Ronald Reagan elected President
• Military buildup and tax cuts
• Fall of the Soviet Union

“From complacency to apathy                  (1990 to 2000)

• Gulf War
• Bill Clinton elected President
• Stock market boom
• Gridlock between Congress & President leads to budget surpluses
• President Clinton acquitted in impeachment trial

“From apathy to dependence                    (2001 to 2007)

• George W. Bush elected President
• Nasdaq stock bubble bursts
• 9/11 attack
• Alan Greenspan lowers rates to 1%
• Invasion of Afghanistan
• Department of Homeland security created
• Invasion of Iraq
• Hurricane Katrina
• Home prices double
• Financial derivatives grow to over $100 trillion

“From dependence back into bondage   (2008 to ????)

• Housing prices collapse
• Financial firms collapse
• Government and Federal Reserve intervene to prop up the worldwide financial system
• Government bailouts of financial firms and auto manufacturers
• Federal Reserve & U.S. Treasury commit over $8 trillion of taxpayer funds
• Barrack Obama elected President
• Immediate borrowing & stimulus packages exceeding $1 trillion are discussed
• Federal Reserve lowers rates to below 1%”

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Employer: Obama Won, So I Fired 22 Employees

A Las Vegas business owner with 114 employees fired 22 workers today, apparently as a direct result of President Obama’s re-election. “David” (he asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons) told Host Kevin Wall on 100.5 KXNT that “elections have consequences” and that “at the end of the day, I need to survive."

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Obama heads to Asia amid looming fear of 'Fiscal Cliff'  By S.A. MILLER N.Y. Post Correspondent

President Obama yesterday announced he’s jetting off on a victory lap around Southeast Asia, despite a new government report warning the Jan. 1 fiscal cliff will plunge the US into a recession and drive the unemployment rate up to 9.1 percent. Obama and Congress have just 52 days to reach a deal to avoid sailing off that precipice, when a devastating double whammy of tax hikes and budget cuts will rock the economy and hit just about every American. The negotiations will be difficult. Obama signaled he’s sticking to his demand for raising taxes on the wealthy. That’s long been a nonstarter with Republicans. 'Raising taxes on small businesses will kill jobs in America. It is as simple as that.' — House Speaker John Boehner.  He will issue a statement today “about the action we need to take to keep our economy growing and reduce our deficit,” the White House said last night. His chief political strategist, David Axelrod, said re-election gives Obama the upper hand. “If the attitude is that nothing happened on Tuesday, that would be unfortunate,” Axelrod told MSNBC.

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"In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself." --Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1771

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CNN: Iranian jets fire on U.S. drone By Barbara Starr November 8, 2012

Two Iranian Su-25 fighter jets fired on an unarmed U.S. Air Force Predator drone in the Persian Gulf on November 1, the Pentagon disclosed on Thursday.  The incident, reported first by CNN, raised fresh concerns within the Obama administration about Iranian military aggression in crucial Gulf oil shipping lanes.  The drone was on routine maritime surveillance in international airspace east of Kuwait, 16 miles off the coast of Iran, U.S. officials said. The Predator was not hit.  "Our aircraft was never in Iranian airspace. It was always flying in international air space. The recognized limit is 12 nautical miles off the coast and we never entered the 12 nautical mile limit," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said in responding to questions from reporters after CNN reported the incident. Little said the United States believed this was the first time an unmanned aircraft was shot at by the Iranians in international waters over the Gulf.   Little stopped short of calling the incident an act of war although the Pentagon was concerned. Two U.S. officials explained the jets were part of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps force, which has been more confrontational than regular Iranian military forces. At least two bursts of gunfire came from the Su-25s' cannons. The drone started to move away but the Iranian aircraft chased it, doing aerial loops around it before breaking away and returning to Iran. The Obama administration did not disclose the incident before the presidential election, but three senior officials confirmed the details to CNN on Thursday.  The drone's still and video cameras captured the incident showing two Su-25s approaching the Predator and firing onboard guns. The Iranian pilots continued to fire shots that went beneath the Predator but were never successful in hitting it, according to the officials. Again, we had Benghazi and now this.  Why does the Administration continue to withhold information?  Was it withheld for election purposes?  Again, such behavior brings about such questions that damage the WH credibility with the public.

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Within Hours Of Re-Election Obama Backs UN Gun Treaty by Tim Brown

According to Reuters: “Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee’s call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade. U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge Washington denies. The month-long talks at U.N. headquarters broke off after the United States – along with Russia and other major arms producers – said it had problems with the draft treaty and asked for more time. But the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee moved quickly after Obama’s win to approve a resolution calling for a new round of talks March 18-28. It passed with 157 votes in favor, none against and 18 abstentions.” 

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Rush: GOP Lost Because It Didn't Turn Out Base By Michelle Lopata

Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh says that the real reason the GOP lost the presidential election is that “the Republican Party didn’t turn out its base" — not demographic issues involving black or Hispanic growth.
“The Democrats think Republicans have a demography problem” and “all they want to do is win votes with old white guys,” Limbaugh said. But “the Republican Party has . . . far more elected Hispanics than the Democrats have.” Limbaugh noted that all of the prominent Hispanic speakers at the Republican National Convention shared a similar “up-from-nothing story” with convention attendees and the country. Limbaugh also said that they or their families came from nothing and that sacrifice and hard work brought them their success in their professions. “Why doesn’t that count?” Limbaugh asked. Because “the hard work story is not resonating with Obama voters.” “We don’t have a demography problem but the Republican Party today is convinced that they do,” said Limbaugh. “If the Republicans who didn’t vote had voted, Mitt Romney would have won the popular vote by 180,000 [votes].” “[Republicans] didn’t lose because of demographics; 3 million of their voters stayed home.”