Now this is weird.

I just found that exact quote yesterday looking for something else.

mike

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...


"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority
always votes for the candidates promising the most money 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 great civilizations has been two
hundred years. These nations have 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 dependency, from dependency back
to bondage."
-- Alexander Tyler - Circa 1780 - discussing the fall of the
Athenian Democracy.