Received in an Email
I received this picture from a friend. The day before, a TDE reader sent me these de Tocqueville reminders: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” And “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. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." * * * * * * * Great quotes, those. For me, such things border on common sense, so much so that I can't imagine how Obama supporters can't see it. Now, I also think that we started down this road back during the Great Depression (hence the lament of Nock and others that the New Deal was a very (very) bad idea) and, at this point, the Republicans aren't much better than the Democrats. To worsen the Republicans' position, they not only throw freebies to the masses, they give huge freebies to big business. The Democrats are also giving freebies to big business, but not as bad as the Republicans . . . just as the Republicans' freebies to the masses aren't as bad as the Democrats'. So if a person pulled the Obama lever with the foregoing in mind, I can forgive him. But if he pulled the lever wholly ignorant of de Tocqueville's warnings, he ought to be taken out and maimed.
