Our democracy threatened by government policies
Dear Editor:
I would like to thank you for the column you printed in your paper Jan. 9, by Dr. Paul Kengor.
He talks about the actual unemployed being about 15 percent and rising but government workers ballooning. Welfare recipients, I have read elsewhere, have increased 20 percent during the Obama administration.
Dr. Kengor mentions how the Iron Lady helped the turn-around of Great Britain, but I see no Margaret Thatcher or a male equivalent with enough backbone to do the same for the U.S.
Nations rise and fall and it seems to me that we are well on our way to the chaotic mess that is now destroying Greece. Hopefully there will be someone like P.M. Thatcher to take the reins of this once great nation and turn it around, although at present it seems unlikely.
Alexis de Tocqueville visited the U.S. in 1831 and wrote a two-volume study of the U.S. and said this: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist 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 the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
Are we there yet? Hopefully not if we can find someone like P.M. Thatcher of England to turn this nation around. Being way over the hill it is my kids and grandkids I am concerned for.
Sincerely yours,
Charles Kern
412 Woodgate Drive
Maryville, TN 37804
