Every time I read an Article in the Daily Standard about the Democrats and their Democracy: I think about how dementias that party has become throughout the years.
The average Democracy lasts 200 years controlled by a gang of thieves our government has become.
In the United States we have always and should always be ruled by a Constitutional Republic governed by the Constitution for which this country stood proudly. And was written by our founding fathers and their common sense about humankind.
If this country wants to become a Third World Banana Republic like Venezuela, allow the Democrats to brainwash the media and We the People to believe otherwise and we won’t see freedom on July 4th, 2026 this country’s 250th Birthday Party.
“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. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler Mapped: 200 Years of Political Regimes, by Country
Do civilians get a representative say in how the government is run where you live?
The list beginning “From bondage to spiritual faith” is commonly known as the
“Tytler Cycle” or the “Fatal Sequence”. Its first known appearance was in a 1943 speech by Henning W. Prentiss, Jr., president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, delivered at the February 1943 convocation of the General Alumni Society of the University of Pennsylvania. The speech was subsequently published under the titles “The Cult of Competency”[25] and “Industrial Management in a Republic”.[26]
While it might seem like living with a basic level of democratic rights is the status quo, this is only true for 93 countries or territories today—the majority of the world does not enjoy these rights. It also might surprise you that much of the progress towards democracy came as late as the mid-20th century.
This interactive map from Our World in Data paints a comprehensive picture of democratic rights across the globe.
Which Countries Achieved Democracy First?
The three famous first words in the U.S. Constitution—“We The People…”—paved the way for the birth of a federal democratic republic in 1789. This makes the United States of America the world’s oldest uninterrupted democracy today.
That said, the classification system in the interactive map above provides a slightly different perspective. It draws from the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, and establishes four major classifications of political systems:
Liberal Democracy
Citizens have further individual and minority rights, are equal before the law,
and the actions of the executive are constrained by the legislative and the courts.
32 countries/territories in 2020
Electoral Democracy
Citizens have the right to participate in meaningful, free and fair,
and multi-party elections. 61 countries/territories in 2020
Electoral Autocracy
Citizens have the right to choose the chief executive and the legislature through multi-party elections; but they lack some freedoms, such as the freedoms of association or expression, that make the elections meaningful, free, and fair.
64 countries/territories in 2020
Closed Autocracy
Citizens do not have the right to either choose the chief executive of the government or the legislature through multi-party elections.
42 countries/territories in 2020
Under the classification system used here, it’s arguable that Switzerland was the first country to achieve a fully liberal democracy status in 1849, followed by Australia in 1858.
The Least Democratic Countries
Our World in Data also looks at how the global population is broken by political regimes.
The following chart demonstrates the share of the global population living under each type of regime since 1800, in relative or absolute terms.
While the global population has increased tremendously in 200 years, so has the number of civilians living under stricter political systems. Today, 1.9 billion people live in closed autocracies, of which nearly 75% live in China alone.
The major dip observed at the very end of the above chart comes from India.
According to the data source, the nation flipped from electoral democracy to electoral autocracy status in 2019. As the second-most populous country, this change affected nearly 1.4 billion people.
Finally, while the data in the above maps and charts ends in 2020, notable events have taken place in recent months that may affect the number of people living in different political regimes. The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in mid-2021 caused the country to slide into closed autocracy status, and as the current conflict in Ukraine/Russia heats up, it’s possible that more people may find themselves living under non-democratic regimes going forward.
The Tytler Cycle Suggests a Democracy Only Lasts 200 Years (historyaddicted.com)
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer, and historian who was a Professor of Universal History and of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.[1]
Life
Tytler was born in the Old Town of Edinburgh, the eldest son of Ann Craig of Costerton (1722–1783) and her husband William Tytler of Woodhouselee (author of Inquiry into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots).[2] He was educated at Edinburgh High School and Kensington Academy in London (1763/64),[3] and then studied law at the University of Edinburgh, qualifying as an advocate in 1770.[2]
In 1771 he made a tour of France with his cousin, James Ker of Blackshiels.[4]
In 1773 he was living and working with his father, also an advocate,
at Campbells Close on the Royal Mile.[5]
In 1780 he was appointed joint professor of Civil History at the University of Edinburgh alongside Prof Pringle. He then moved to Browns Square.[6] He became sole professor in 1786 on the death of Pringle.[7]
In 1790 he became Judge Advocate of Scotland. In 1795 he became seriously ill, and could not attend court.[8]
In 1802 he became a Lord of Session in the Scottish Courts, with the judicial title Lord Woodhouselee.[9]
Tytler’s other positions included Senator of the College of Justice and George Commissioner of Justiciary in Scotland.[10] Tytler was a friend of Robert Burns, and prevailed upon him to remove lines from his poem “Tam o’ Shanter” which were insulting to the legal and clerical professions.[11]
In 1811 he retired from his role as Senator of the College of Justice his place being filled by David Williamson, Lord Balgray.
He died at his townhouse at 65 Princes Street[12] in Edinburgh and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. The vault lies on the west side of the section known as the Covenanter’s Prison which is generally closed to public view.[13]
Family
In 1776 he married Ann Fraser of Balnain. Their children included Patrick Fraser Tytler, traveller and historian, James Fraser Tytler, a lawyer, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Assistant Judge and author in Bengal, India, and William Fraser Tytler, a lawyer and historian.[14]
Translation
Tytler wrote a treatise that is important in the history of translation theory, the Essay on the Principles of Translation (London, 1791).[15] It has been argued in a 1975 book by Gan Kechao that Yan Fu’s famous translator’s dictum of fidelity, clarity and elegance came from Tytler.
Tytler said that translation should fully represent the 1) ideas and 2) style of the original and should 3) possess the ease of original composition.
Quotations on democracy
In his Lectures, Tytler expressed a critical view of democracy in general and representative democracies such as republics in particular. He believed that “a pure democracy is a chimera”, and that “All government is essentially of the nature of a monarchy“.[16]
In discussing the Athenian democracy, after noting that a great number of the population were actually enslaved, he went on to say, “Nor were the superior classes in the actual enjoyment of a rational liberty and independence. They were perpetually divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues; and these maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money”.[16]
Speaking about the measure of freedom enjoyed by the people in a republic or democracy, Tytler wrote, “The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people?
They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch”.[17]
Tytler dismisses the more optimistic vision of democracy by commentators such as Montesquieu as “nothing better than an Utopian theory, a splendid chimera, descriptive of a state of society that never did, and never could exist; a republic not of men, but of angels”, for “While man is being instigated by the love of power—a passion visible in an infant, and common to us even with the inferior animals—he will seek personal superiority in preference to every matter of a general concern”.[18]
“Or at best, he will employ himself in advancing the public good, as the means of individual distinction and elevation: he will promote the interest of the state from the selfish but most useful passion of making himself considerable in that establishment which he labors to aggrandize. Such is the true picture of man as a political agent”.[18]
Maslow’s Pyramid of hierarchy needs – Search (bing.com)
However, Tytler does admit that there are individual exceptions to the rule, and that he is ready to allow “that this form of government is the best adapted to produce, though not the most frequent, yet the most striking, examples of virtue in individuals”, paradoxically because a “democratic government opposes more impediments to disinterested patriotism than any other form.
To surmount these, a pitch of virtue is necessary which, in other situations, where the obstacles are less great and numerous, is not called in to exertion. The nature of a republican government gives to every member of the state an equal right to cherish views of ambition, and to aspire to the highest offices of the commonwealth; it gives to every individual of the same title with his fellows to aspire at the government of the whole”.[19]
Tytler believed that democratic forms of government such as those of Greece and Rome have a natural evolution from initial virtue toward eventual corruption and decline. In Greece, for example, Tytler argues that “the patriotic spirit and love of ingenious freedom … became gradually corrupted as the nation advanced in power and splendour”.[20]
Tytler further states: “Patriotism always exists to the greatest degree in rude nations, and in an early period of society. Like all other affections and passions, it operates with the greatest force always where it meets with the greatest difficulties … but in a state of ease and safety, as if wanting its appropriate nourishment, it languishes and decays”. …
“It is a law of nature to which no experience has ever furnished an exception, that the rising grandeur and opulence of a nation must be balanced by the decline of its heroic virtues”.[20]
How Rome Fell by Adrian Goldsworthy – Search (bing.com)
In AD 200, the Roman Empire seemed unassailable, its vast territory accounting for most of the known world. By the end of the fifth century, Roman rule had vanished in western Europe and much of northern Africa, and only a shrunken Eastern Empire remained.
In his account of the fall of the Roman Empire, prizewinning author Adrian Goldsworthy examines the painful centuries of the superpower’s decline.
Bringing history to life through the stories of the men, women, heroes, and villains involved, the author uncovers surprising lessons about the rise and fall of great nations. This was a period of remarkable personalities, from the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius to emperors like Diocletian, who portrayed themselves as tough, even brutal, soldiers.
It was a time of revolutionary ideas, especially in religion, as Christianity went from persecuted sect to the religion of state and emperors. Goldsworthy pays particular attention to the willingness of Roman soldiers to fight and kill each other.
Ultimately, this is the story of how an empire without a serious rival rotted from within,
its rulers and institutions putting short-term ambition and personal survival over the wider good of the state.