Comment: Is Tytler right?

I don't consider Tytler's model to be self evident. It has several faults and does not necessarily represent the ONLY possible cycle of events. For example, Tytler treats "bondage" as if it is at the extreme worst of a cyclical gradient, but that's not how it really works. Most Americans will tell you today that America has not yet "fallen", yet they ALL are in various states of bonadage. High taxes. High regulation. Loss of certain freedoms. Etc.

Tytler's model, however, tends to suggest that during "abundance", there is no bondage. We are currently in a time of relative abundance, however, and are also bound more than we were a decade ago.

A simpler and more accurate model is probably this:

From cognitive and civic miserliness (which facilitates despotism) to proactive self rule.
From proactive self rule back into cognitive and civic miserliness.

And its simpler yet if we leave out the causes:

From despotism into self rule.
From self rule into despotism.

Tytler greatly overplays "faith" in my observation. Roughly 80% of Americans claim to have faith (of the Christian sort), yet we continue to sink into despotism. Yes, someone always wants to argue that these people don't have TRUE faith, yet there is no passage in the Bible that clearly and succinctly defines "Christian" or "Christianity".

But besides that, does Tytler (or anybody else) expect God to come down here and reform our government for us, if only we'll turn to the "true" version of faith? Or is it rather the expectation that people of "faith" will develop in themselves the high character necessary to free themselves from despotism?

If that's the case, that seems to be failing, too, for our churches, for whatever reason, put out only a very, very few people with this sort of character.

Don't get me wrong, whether it comes out of the churches or someplace else, without that sort of character, we are hopeless. But if anyone thinks that "faith" is the answer, I hope they have in mind some manner of "faith" that is distinct from that which we can already observe to be useless for such things.