The Tytler Cycle Part 4 From CommonSenseGovernment.com By John Eberhard 11/24/12

I am writing this article in the weeks after the 2012 election. Certainly conservatives everywhere are in shock.

I believe the Tytler cycle explains a lot about what is going on in America, and specifically the re-election of Barack Obama. I have written three other articles about the Tytler cycle (1, 2, 3).

Alexander Tytler was a Scottish historian who lived at the time of the American founding fathers. Tytler stated:

"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”

First of all, a comment of my own about what makes this cycle happen and what makes it inevitable. In my religion I believe that all men are basically good, but by committing harmful acts they fall away from goodness and begin to do evil. They can be recovered to good and rehabilitated, but this is often a difficult process and the person has to be willing to change himself.

So at least for the present time, there are evil people in the world. And there are enough of these people in the world that they will work ceaselessly to pervert any free government or society and move it toward apathy, dependence and bondage.

We see politicians endlessly offering free handouts. Welfare, food stamps, rent assistance, on and on. We even see politicians offering free handouts like welfare and other goodies to illegal immigrants, and judges saying that it is unconstitutional to take away these free handouts (how does the Constitution guarantee free benefits to anyone, let alone someone who is not a citizen and has even broken the law to come here?). I think that at least some of these people are evil acting people, moving the country on purpose towards dependency and bondage. They know what they are doing, and their end game is bondage (for you, not them). They want massive power and to hang onto it as long as possible. And they can’t get as much power as they want in a free society.

Two factors make me say that we are now in the dependency stage of the Tytler cycle, and moving into the bondage stage.

1. The Percentage of the Population on Public Assistance

Take a look at the graph below, from Fox News.

From 1983 to 2011, we have gone from 30% of US households getting government benefits, to 49.1%. For anyone who’s not very good at math, that’s almost half of US households collecting some type of government assistance. Even 30% is a shocking figure but nearly 50% is beyond bizarre.

Take a look at this graphic showing US civilian labor force participation, i.e. what percentage have jobs.

It goes from 67.5% in 2000, to 63.5% in 2012. Check out the steep decline after Obama takes office in 2009.

A friend told me he saw a segment on TV in the last week where a woman was interviewed, and asked about whether she was going to get a job. She said no, because between welfare and food stamps and rent assistance, she was collecting $3,500 per month. And when she was working, she was only making $3,000 per month. So she wasn’t going to bother to get a job. $3,500 per month is $42,000 a year! That’s just a little less than the US median household income.

Tell me that that isn’t an incentive for people to sit at home and produce nothing. No contribution to society or the economy. A total parasite.

And what type of politician or official would set things up so someone could collect that much in public assistance? Does he have the best interests of the United States at heart? Obviously not.

Here’s another issue here to think about. How did we get to the point where people think it’s good or OK to just be a parasite and live off the production of others? What happened to educating people with a strong work ethic? What about the concept of exchange, or working to receive money and then using the money to buy things you need?

What happened to the stigma attached to being a leech on society? Why doesn’t that lady feel ashamed that she is sitting on her butt collecting money for doing nothing? Why aren’t her friends and relatives telling her it’s not OK? She thinks it is OK to an extent that she is willing to announce it on national TV.

Clearly people are no longer being educated with a strong work ethic, and the stigma attached to being a bum has been removed.

2. The Re-Election of Barack Obama

After I have had a chance to digest the data, I will write another article on how it was that Obama was able to be re-elected.

But for now I’ll discuss what this means in terms of the Tytler cycle.

Clearly, if 50% of the households in America are receiving some kind of government handout, then as Tytler says:

“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."

Obama has been more overt than any other president about pushing free benefits. His administration has openly pushed for more and more people to receive food stamps, and food stamp consumption has increased by 41%. I have heard that this administration has even run promotional campaigns to get more people on food stamps and remove the stigma attached to it.

So that 49.1% of American households that are receiving public assistance, who do you think they are going to vote for? Which candidate has the reputation of being in favor of more free government handouts?

Obama of course. Romney is probably perceived as being too much into business and jobs and “Geez I’d have to get a job!”

So if 49.1% of households translates into nearly half the population, that’s a heck of a voting block, isn’t it? And that’s obviously been Barack Obama’s strategy and the Democratic Party’s strategy for the last 50 years.

I saw a graphic that someone posted on Facebook after the election, saying that Romney offered jobs, but the public did not want them. That's a scary idea, but it's probably close to the mark. That, to me, more than any other factor, says we are in the dependence part of the Tytler cycle and moving into bondage.

The End Game

What is the end game of getting a larger and larger percentage of the population onto the dole? First of all it is financially unsustainable. The federal government is already borrowing huge amounts to pay all these entitlements and the public debt is piling up. The level of federal debt is already at a level where it will be a crippling burden to future generations, and Obama has no intention of stopping or slowing down, even though he occasionally says that.

So the end game is total dependence, and then total bondage. Tytler says we will see financial collapse (as we are seeing in some European countries and even with some US cities and states) and then into a dictatorship. If you check out some of the Executive Orders Obama has issued, giving him ridiculous levels of power over our food, water, communications systems, it looks like martial law.

What We Can Do

Even though, per Tytler, we may have to go through a bondage cycle, I don’t believe we should all go into apathy about it. I think we should accept that there will be some hard times ahead and our country will suffer from the work of some bad men.

But I think we should continue working hard, doing what we can to educate people on key principles:

• We need to educate people on the concept of exchange and that it is not OK to get something for nothing and be a parasite on society. It doesn’t matter that it is being offered by the government. People need to work for a living and be independent and they need to be taught that, apparently. Incredible but true.
• We need to better instill a work ethic in people around us, especially in our next generation. Show them the satisfaction of working hard and accomplishing something and producing products and services that are high quality that other people are willing to pay their hard-earned money for.
• We need to educate people that it is not bad to achieve more than other people. This is the basic lie that the liberal/socialist/statist uses. He says that if you work hard and achieve a lot, that it is bad and you shouldn't do it. You're taking the bread out of someone else's mouth. It's a complete lie.
• We need to educate more people on the principles of political conservatism: less government, lower taxes, personal responsibility and the free market, and also educate them about the dangers of socialism, dependency and bondage.

Unfortunately the mainstream news media, Hollywood, and our education system are spewing out liberal-socialist propaganda constantly.

So we have our work cut out for us. But it is more important than ever for each person to do something along this line, to educate people around you. Get discussions going. Discuss these issues with your kids at the dinner table. Discuss them with friends after work. Start a book discussion group (I can recommend a great list of books to read). Post things on social media sites.

If we all do something, we can pull through the bondage period more quickly and emerge out the other side. That’s what I want to see. 

See Part 1

See Part 2

See Part 3

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