Late Afternoon in America

First, today is Vetran's Day. A thanks to everyone who has served their country.

Took a trip to Ohio this past week, to visit family. This is I an HDR image of the courthouse in Millersberg, hand-held.  My old stomping grounds of Wayne, Holmes, and western Stark counties.

Being back in Ohio for the election was quite interesting, and depressing. The majority of the area in Ohio was solid Romney country, or should I say, anti-Obama country. However, once you went into large cities, you were in solid Obama country. Not so much the suburbs, but especially in the poorer sections and campuses. In all my running around the countryside, I saw very few Obama signs in rural areas or small towns. I saw no Romney signs in poor sections of Canton, Akron, etc.

I think we've reached a tipping point in this country where the takers now outnumber the makers.

As the famous quote goes, 

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results 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 two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage." 

:	Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813) Lord Woodhouselee, Scottish jurist, professor and historian
Source:	supposedly from The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic, c.1799 but no book has been found.

Elsewhere, I saw this attributed to Alexis De Tocqueville.  Authentic or not, it aptly describes the situation today.

Then there is  this.

To loosely paraphrase from another famous quote, "For the first time in my life, I am not optimistic about the future of this country."