"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."

--Lord Alexander Tytler on the fall of the Athenian republic. Written in 1776.

Almost two thirds of the Federal Budget is currently entirely devoted to transferring money to voters from other citizens.

We are well on the road to dependency on this cycle, and the modern Democratic Party has got the throttle to the firewall. There is no major policy, program, or proposal envisioned by the Democratic Party that does not increase the power of the central government over the individual.* In their ideal world, all good things in life should be obtained from an all-powerful benevolent state, and the vision of millions of grateful citizens crawling on their bleeding knees to them for their alms figures prominently in their dreams.

We are burning up our future, and people wonder why I am thunderstruck when it is cheerfully proposed by otherwise reasonable that massive new entitlements be immediately enacted. Higher retirement benefits. The entire health care system turned over to the State. That wealth redistribution be INCREASED, not ramped back. That dependency be institutionalized forever. Oddly, many of these same people crap down their legs at the idea that a city park might have a manger scene displayed in it.

*Go ahead. Name two.