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Who said "Democracy will work only until the people discover that they can vote themselves welfare checks." or something like that.

So true - you can say it like this, too: "Democracy will work until politicians realize they can vote themselves a raise."

Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887: 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men'.

Professor Alexander Fraser Tyler, a Scottish historian who in 1787, writing about the decline and fall of the Athenian Republic over two thousand year before, said: "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."

When a society bases its political power on a majority vote, it is inevitable that those wishing to have power will seek to satisfy the needs of those who will provide it (vote) by transferring wealth. This leads to ever increasing public spending fueled by the self-interest of producers. With each increment in the common realm, more people are brought into the class of those receiving benefits . . . these people will take their benefits into account, desire to maintain or increase their level of benefits, vote for those who will support them, and thus, the level of spending will ever increase. The needs of the voters will eventually exceed the treasury’s ability, so fiscally unsound policies will be undertaken.

Our Framers must have been aware of Tyler's theory, because they limited the Federal government to a very narrow focus with only a few listed responsibilities. Everything else went to the states. This act negated centralized power.

British statesman Edmund Burke, over two centuries ago, warned of the dangers to any society that promotes the idea that some of its citizens are the natural prey of others. No society has ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce. The growth of a large parasitic class (including bureaucracies) marked the decline and fall of the Roman and Spanish empires. Over the centuries, the Byzantine and Ottoman empires developed so suffocating and corrupting bureaucracies as to destroy incrementally their own empires. Spain used the incredible wealth of the new world to support growing numbers of Spaniards in idleness. Disappearance of empires due to catastrophes have been extremely rare in history. Rather, they slowly but steadily corrode and crumble from within. A growing amount of wealth is pumped by the State from the economy and transferred to a growing number of small but influential (interest) groups.

A Durable Free Society: Utopian Dream or Realistic Goal (excerpts from) - A Shenfield - The state is not society. Society and the state are two different entities, even though their members may be the same and even though they may intermesh with each other intimately. The state is the entity charged with the task of protecting society, but the society over-flows the bounds of the state into fields where the state has no right to go. A society cannot be free if it is synonymous with the state. For if it were, all human activity would not only be governed by law. It would also be prescribed and licensed by law, which is the meaning of totalitarianism.

The only form of equality which may be sought by the state is equality before the law. With equality before the law, the goddess of justice is rightly depicted as blind as she holds the scales evenly; blind because she is no respecter of persons. To her all, rich or poor, strong or weak, high or low, come for equal protection. Per contra, the state pursuit of equality of income or wealth is poison to justice and freedom. So too is equality of opportunity if that means, as unfortunately it has increasingly come to mean, that life's races must be fixed so that all start equal.

Though even the modest taxation of the limited state may have some incidental income - redistributive effect, the deliberate pursuit of redistribution of incomes or wealth by the state is absolutely impermissible. It is par excellence the mark of the robber state, all the worse when it presents itself as the expression of compassion or human brotherhood. The state may not command, direct, control or regulate the economic activity of the people, except where it can be convincingly shown that such a measure is an essential means of preventing the people from encroaching upon each other's liberty or rightful property. - A. Shenfield

Who said "Democracy will work only until the people discover that they can vote themselves welfare checks." or something like that.

Alexis deTocqueville.

BUMP

Who said "Democracy will work only until the people discover that they can vote themselves welfare checks." or something like that.

Robert E. Heinlein said something like: "Democracy works well until the people discover they can vote themselves bread and circuses."

Walt