CARLTON FLETCHER: A lesson in democracy from back in the day

Still a man hears what he wants to hear and he disregards the rest.

— Simon and Garfunkel

Scottish history professor Alexander Tyler, who taught at the University of Edinburgh, said this in 1787:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

Author P.T. Deutermann uses professor Tyler’s theory on democracy — and Tyler’s eight steps of its inevitable decline — to excellent effect in his exciting new novel “Red Swan.” Deutermann’s CIA Director, J. Leverett Hingham III, in the act of firing one of his top operatives, the novel’s primary character, Dr. Preston Allender, points out :

”Don’t you know the inevitable fate of all democracies? They decline in eight steps: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacence to apathy; from apathy to dependence; and from dependence back into bondage.”

I’ve heard this theory espoused before, used typically by political malcontents who are certain the politicians they loathe — those being anyone they’ve been told by their preferred leaders to dislike — have brought us to the brink of Tyler’s eighth step. Still, our democracy rolls on, often in spite of itself … or in spite of the goobers we keep electing to represent us.

Still … you have to admit that the good professor — and Deutermann — has a point when you look at America’s emergence and compare its history to Tyler’s theory.

From bondage to spiritual faith: The founders of this country overcame any number of hardships to carve new lives for themselves after they left behind various other homelands where they were indeed bound by unscrupulous rulers. (Of course, these same “founding fathers” helped pretty much annihilate the indigenous peoples who’d settled this land first, but we’re supposed to forget that part.) The new bond that a large number of these early settlers formed centered around religious faith and freedom.

From spiritual faith to great courage: The courage that it took to leave the “civilized world” behind and forge this new land (again, at the expense of the original settlers) out of rampant wilderness was indeed monumental.

From courage to liberty: Spurred by the tyranny of rulers in those lands they left behind — rulers who lay claim to the goods produced by the settlers as divine right — these pioneers decided, in the words of one of their heroes, that when it came to remaining subjects of that former homeland: “Give me liberty or give me death.” And they won that liberty against the greatest of odds.

From liberty to abundance: With freedom, particularly freedom from burdensome taxation, and with a new, “free” government in place, America began to thrive, enjoying the fruits of this new land’s abundance.

From abundance to complacency: The history of America is a history of unparalleled growth and unmatched abundance. Newly free of foreign reign, and with the taking of ever more land and its teeming goods, the free thinkers of the American renaissance sparked a level of complacency as the country morphed into the greatest in the history of the world.

From complacency to apathy: While the true believers rallied Americans to the ideal of its founding, the country’s increasingly fat and lazy citizens lost interest in … well, pretty much anything that didn’t affect them directly. Our country’s unofficial motto became: Ehhh … let him do it.

From apathy to dependence: And here we are. We’ve become a country of takers, three generations deep into a dependence that grips a large segment of the population, individuals and families for whom such trite slogans as pride in accomplishment, self-made and patriotism have been replaced with what can you give me? Some don’t even get the concept of what it takes to fend for themselves, counting instead on some unseen benefactor that keeps paying the rent, the phone bill, the grocery bill, the doctor bill.

From dependence back into bondage: And this is what we have to ask ourselves as we trade self-reliance for dependence on others for our daily existence: If we’re not capable of fending for and taking care of ourselves, are we really free?