A THOUGHT PROVOKING PREDICTION This is from February of 2007. Its prescience is eerie. Could it be coming to pass so soon? You may already have seen this. We all get these emails, forwarded through an army of previous recipients over long periods of time. It should be standard practice to verify them via sites like Snopes or Hoax Busters, which I have done with the one quoted below. The result, as you can see, is mixed but  the message is nonetheless worthy of concern. In my opinion, enough of the material presented herein is verifiable to cause us to reflect on the condition of our country and the direction in which it is headed: At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior: "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…” Can anyone deny that the voters of this great republic, in large numbers, have discovered that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury?  Elected so-called representatives have been doing it for years. Congress has a different retirement plan than do the rest of us, as well as better health insurance. But that’s just a drop in the bucket. Examine what liberal candidates of both parties, whom we have elected, have given us and/or promised to give us. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare programs in abundance, Universal Health Care, affordable housing, unemployment insurance, paid family leave, ad infinitum. Our own governor, Deval Patrick, is offering free tuition to all the state’s community colleges; a plan widely supported by “educators”. The beat goes on. Ask yourself how many candidates you have cast a vote for, or will support in the coming election period, because of what you, personally, will get if he or she is elected? Be honest – don’t lie to yourself. Most people don’t understand that the government has no money. Whenever the government gives something to one group of citizens (or, in many cases these days, non-citizens) it has to take that money, in the form of taxes, from someone else. So when a presidential candidate promises free universal health care, or free tuition, or affordable housing, or anything else, it has to confiscate the money to pay for it from you and your neighbors. And don’t ever forget, what these candidates are really doing is buying votes, and what the voters are doing is, as Professor Tyler said, voting themselves generous gifts from the public treasury, and, possibly, seriously damaging this country.