Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler allegedly said that "a democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

Whether Tytler actually said it or not, it works fairly well as prophecy, as we watch our national debt zoom past $40 trillion, with no apparent will among either the electorate or our political leadership to reverse course.

The arrival within the last century or so of the welfare state may have been largely beneficial, but it also brought with it the primary cause of the deficits and debt in liberal democracies, which is the tendency of politicians to buy votes with government checks.

And now comes, of course (who else?), Donald Trump to take the checks-for-votes stratagem of which Tytler allegedly complained so long ago to its logical extreme, with not new programs or benefits but simply the check, $5,000 per person, if enough persons vote Republican in five weeks.

MAGA minions point out that Joe Biden made an especially audacious such effort to buy votes with the public treasury when he waved a magic wand and made student loan debts suddenly disappear.

But, again, there were at least some arguments put forth on behalf of his executive order, even if they weren't particularly........

© Arkansas Online