Quote of the Weekend

From Dr. Sanity:

This weekend is clearly going to be make or break for those of us who value freedom and don't want to see America take a giant leap forward toward socialism and Big Government.

Like Charles Krauthammer, I believe that--by hook or crook(and undoubtedly it will be mostly crook), this terrible thing is going to be foisted on the American public, who clearly do not want it. But we will get it nonetheless, because we were so careless about who we elected; so mesmerized by empty rhetoric and so zombified by the promises of hopenchange.

I am pessimistic, but willing to be pleasantly surprised that there are still people of conscience and integrity who will stand against this health care tyranny.

If there aren't, then this will truly be the beginning of a pathetic end for the American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I've seen this sentiment echoed all over the web the last couple of days. For the previous couple of weeks, there have been numerous references to the Declaration of Independence, specifically this passage:

. . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

But I am reminded again of the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal.

and of the timeline apocryphally attributed to Alexander Tytler:

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 that 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.

The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.

And, of course, de Tocqueville's warning:

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

Finally Heinlein's observation:

The worst thing about living in the declining era of a great civilization . . . is knowing that you are.