Community Viewpoint: Democracy?

Can a democracy exist as a permanent form of government? As you may have read, a democracy can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury. The result is that democracies always collapse over a loss of fiscal responsibility and is always followed by a dictatorship.

In 1776, Alexander Tyler wrote in The Decline &Fall of the Athenian Republic, “The average life of the world’s greatest civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. The nations progressed in 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.” These words are as true today as they were when the founding fathers were beginning the fight for independence and a new country.

To preserve our constitutional democracy, many educated citizens are ignoring faith-based religious tenets and supernatural beings who can intervene in human affairs, in favor of the philosophy of scientific Humanism.

A Humanist believes in facts, scientific facts if you will, not in hearsay, myths &superstition. Today, Humanism is expanding with the growth of scientific evidence in many arenas — the origin of the Universe &our solar system; the formation of our planet; the foundation of life, and subsequent evolution of all creatures.

The late Edward Said once explained that “Humanism is the only, and I would go so far as saying, the final resistance we have against inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”

Indeed, humanism represents the binding social, political, and cultural thread that can unite people of different cultures, beliefs, and values into a common framework of respectful co-inhabitance, while at the same time, articulating a vision of shared humanity in which all the peoples of the world can prosper. Humanism, with its foundations in enlightenment principles, critical thinking, the scientific method, and an ethical world view, is the ideal philosophy for executing all human socio-political endeavors.

Today we have the future in our own hands and what happens to our descendents will be decided by the thoughtful direction we take.