Source http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html

More people have voted for Amerikan Idol.

We have let the politicians dismantle the Constitution. They have broken the antitrust laws that Teddy Roosevelt put in place to protect us, and now we have the oil companies making the energy policies and the 6 giant media corporations controlling the information we receive on the main stream sources.

We have allowed a Neo-convict to bamboozle the nation into an endless “war on terror” and let his pals at the war-profiteer store to empty out our treasury and put us into debt so far that it will take at least as many years as the Commander in Thief has been in office to get out, if we do the right things.

We pass laws that dismantle our industrial manufacturing base like NAFTA, CAFTA and what ever. I wonder who will be building our ships, tanks, and aircraft soon.

I saw 2 quotes on another blog from a Scotsman named Alexander Tyler, a history professor from about the time that our constitution was written 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 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 world's 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.

I do see more people starting to wake up to what has been going on at the highest levels of government. Is it too late and too little, though? This country will have to endure some hard times and it will be painful. The problem seems to be now that no one wants to be the ones who do the suffering.

Paying for this war should start when you begin the war - not passed off to future generations. We need to become energy independent, and that will be painful. We need to fix Social Security, health care, our crumbling infrastructure, education, the illegal immigration problem and many other issues that need real long term solutions, not campaign mantras.

It seems as if Amerika has become the nation of the quick and easy fix. Everyone wants the payoff but not the work. We want knowledge and wisdom like Neo got it in the movie the Matrix. Plug in the USB to the brain and load the information up in 30 seconds. I don’t have the time to learn; I have to watch the latest on Brittney, then I have to catch up on who fell down in dancing with the stars.

To fix the issues that matter will be painful ,and anyone addressing these issues and doing real long term cures will probably only have one term to do it.

American democracy, is our time about up?