Thought this was a pretty good observation by JP. "Liberal politicians have insisted ever more loudly over the past five decades that no cost was and is ever too great for others to bear in the pursuit of blind service to the planet." It's the whole problem with much of liberal politics. They want to have an aura of charity and responsible behavior because they are willing to force others to sacrifice for their cause. So Al Gore goes about the planet on his private plane to preach the gospel of the need for greater sacrifice on the part of others to prevent a hypothetical global climate catastrophe.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

(CS Lewis )

In 1887, Alexander Fraser, a Scottish professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the Athens democracy .
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. Democracy will continue to exist until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes 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.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, nations have always regressed to the following 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 dependence back to bondage

Really a great post. You could possibly add this. Early on, freedom is seen as the ability to do those things which are noble and sensible. A person is free to engage in meaningful speech, to publish significant works, or to find a better job. But then it begins to degrade into freedom to use profane language, to publish pornography, to divorce your wife, to walk about dressed immodestly, to marry a person of the same gender, or to profit from the taxes levied upon others. In other words, it degrades from the freedom to do that which is right to being free to be immoral.

John Adams. “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”