A democracy is always temporary in nature....

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813), a Scottish lawyer and history professor at the University of Edinburgh, is reputed to have said about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

‘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 they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote 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.’