How did past civilizations rise and fall? How rare is America's experiment with a republic? With every crisis, is power being taken away from "the people" and transfered to the central government. Does history give us a clue as to where all this is all headed? George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, 1796: "Disorders and miseries...gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an Individual...[who] turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public...and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism." Ronald Reagan stated at St. John's University, NY, March 28, 1985: "Government that is big enough to give you everything you want is more likely to simply take everything you've got." Woodrow Wilson warned in New York, 1912: "The history of Liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the powers of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties."
In the nearly 6,000 years of recorded human history, power, like gravity, seems to inevitably concentrate into the hands of one individual, sometimes called pharoah, caesar, czar, kaiser, king, emperor, monarch, sultan, president or communist dictator. No matter what the autocratic leader's particular title is, the default setting for human government throughout history has most often been monarchy. When power is concentrated, the State is supreme. When power is separated, the individual is supreme. America's founders had a unique window of opportunity in the long train of world history, to maximize the freedom and opportunity of the individual. Ronald Reagan stated in 1961: "In this country of ours took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in the world's history...Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another." Is past behavior the best indicator of future performance? What can we expect? Find out as world history comes alive from a whole new perspective in "Change to Chains - the 6000 year quest for control - Volume I: Rise of the Republic."
