This explains, as well as anything I have seen, the cause for the steep decline of Christianity and its associated morality and sense of personal responsibility in our nation over the past 50 to 100 years. It can be applied to the histories of many nations and cultures throughout the world throughout history.
Here it is applied to American History:
From bondage to spiritual faith (1500-1600's: Persecution in Europe energized faith and action);
From spiritual faith to great courage (1600-1700's: Migration and formation of a new nation);
From courage to liberty (1700-1800's: Development of the new free nation;
From liberty to abundance (1800-1940's: Prosperity and growing success of a new world power);
From abundance to complacency (1950's through 1970's: Self-satisfaction and invincibility);
From complacency to apathy (1970 through 2000's: Majority preoccupied and doesn't participate);
From apathy to dependence (2000 through present: A near majority become dependent on govt.);
From dependence back into bondage (2013 and beyond until we are are persecuted enough to rediscover our spiritual faith as the basis for renewed courage.)
Here is a reputed source of this cycle:
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh ,
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 over 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."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul , Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the last Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was
mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.
Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income
tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
"complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy,
with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached
the "governmental dependency" phase.