Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

The engines of government's growth

Asks DeMint (Rep. Jim DeMint, campaigning for the Senate from South Carolina), "How can a nation survive when a majority of its citizens, now dependent on government services, no longer have the incentive to restrain the growth of government?" DeMint speaks of an "eleventh-hour crisis in our democracy."

His words echo those of Scottish Professor Alexander Tyler, writing more than 200 years ago, on the fall of the Athenian republic.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government," wrote Tyler. "It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. 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."

Just another sign of an approaching end.