The Life Cycle of Democracies - Where are we?

The Life Cycle of Democracies

There is a view among some historians that a democracy is an intrinsically unstable form of government:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse...from the public treasury... The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years...

And the cycle is surprisingly predictable:

...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 dependency;

from dependency back again into bondage.

-Alexander Tyler, 1750


Studies of the predictable decay of empires and cultures generally discern three primary aspects of their decline: Social Decay, Cultural Decay, and Moral Decay.

The first, Social Decay, is characterized by the crisis of lawlessness, the loss of economic discipline, and the rise of bureaucracy.

This is associated with Cultural Decay: the decline of education, the weakening of cultural foundations, and the loss of respect for tradition.

All this is, of course, the result of Moral Decay: the rise of immorality, the decay of religious beliefs, and the subsequent devaluation of human life.


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