This is Amy Carder's Blog. She'll post lots of thoughts here about church life, home-schooling, raising four, make that five kids and all of the other craziness that our life together throws at us.
Lately I have been thinking about this circle of a civilization thing I saw a few years back. Then yesterday while attending open house at Jessi's new school (yes Jessi is going to school this year...I'll tell all about that in another post.) her gym teacher, who is about 60 years old or so, made the comment that kids these days have no idea how to solve problems for themselves. That parents are too quick to come to their rescue therefore leaving them with no tools of their own to solve their own problems.
I really think we are quickly rolling into dependency on the following scale. Very scary! In light of recent events I think it gives us something to think about.
I searched around on the internet for the example of the circle and this is what I found.: www.worldnewsstand.net/today/articles/thehistorycircle.htm.
This memorable quotation is from Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813). Scottish jurist and historian, he was widely known in his time and was professor of Universal History at Edinburgh University in the late 18th century.
The quotation is from the 1801 collection of his lectures.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
That is why our forefathers founded the United States of America as a REPUBLIC, not a DEMOCRACY.
The average age of the world's great 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 complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage.
Having read what Professor Tyler had to say, now read the following and see what Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote about the 2000 Presidential election between Al Gore and George Bush.
Population of counties won by Gore 127 million -- by Bush 143 million. Square miles of country won by Gore 580,000 -- by Bush 2,427,000. States won by Gore 19 -- by Bush 29. Murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore 13.2 -- by Bush 2.1 (not a typo.) Professor Olson adds: "The map of the territory Bush won was (mostly) the land owned by the people of this great country. NOT the citizens living in cities in tenements owned by the government and living off the government." Professor Olson thinks the US is now between the apathy and complacency phase of democracy although he believes that 40 percent of the nation's population has already reached the dependency phase.
NOTE: Both items above were verified through Google Internet Search.
THE QUESTION IS:
Where are we now?
REALITY CHECK
"Nations richer and more powerful in their day than we are in this, have been sabotaged, defeated, enslaved.
Babylon was the largest and richest nation of its time, but its lust for luxury made it an easy mark for the Medes and Persians who overran it, and divided its land and enslaved the people between them.
Rome was a greater military power than we ever were, but when free bread and circuses became more important to the people than hard work and patriotism, Rome was invaded and looted by the tougher Vandals.
The Incas were the most civilized, richest people in the Americas, but ruthless, better-armed invaders destroyed them as a nation, and looted everything they owned and had spent generations in creating.
In every case it was the self indulgent weakness of the victim which made victory of the invader easy.
Undoubtedly there were Babylonians, Romans, Incas who warned against overindulgence and weakness, who warned that each citizen is responsible for his nation, and that that responsibility cannot be shrugged off on officials. But to those who warned of impending trouble there was then as now the smug sneer, 'It can't happen here.'
But it did."
-Anonymous
I understand that there were old and handicapped people that needed to be dependant upon someone else to get them out of that mess. That's not what I'm talking about. It's much bigger than that. It's about a society that is dependant upon a machine; taking no responsibilty for themselves or those around them and then passing the blame.
Yesterday while waiting on a very long train, my parents and I thought it would be fun to sing. We sang BINGO, If You're Happy and You Know It..., along with other kid songs. Then for some reason Mom and I started singing the Star Spangled Banner. That's when William (our newly acquired son from
Today, (technically yesterday; it's after midnight) sixteen years ago, I married my high school sweetheart. On the thirteenth of this month he will have been my boyfriend for twenty years! I'm in Ohio and he's in Bulgaria and he still managed to send me a dozen roses. I love him more than I did sixteen years ago...how much will I love him sixteen years from now?
I am a wife to my husband and stay-at-home mom to four, make that five wonderful kids. We are involved in the Apex Community of house churches and home school the kids. After Dave retires from the military, we hope to settle down on a ranch somewhere and raise organic beef and chickens.
