Then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again

Those of you who have read my columns over the last 15 years in the Daily Legal News and the News & Eagle blogs know that I am a student of history. Happily there are lots of thoughtful and insightful historians through the centuries, from the Greek Herodotus to our present day.
One of the best historians of Western Civilization’s Classical period was Edward Gibbon, author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Gibbon was writing in the 18th century but is still frequently studied three centuries later. His research and narratives have stood the test of many generations.
The Greek city-states invented the modern political concepts of republics, democracies, tyrannies, etc., especially the city-state of Athens. They introduced us t o the ideas of liberty and freedom of civic service to our cities and nation, and experienced all the variations of self-rule, despotic rule and imperial domination. None of the basic meanings of any of these things has changed over the last 25 to 26 centuries!
Gibbons spent a great deal of energy studying the Greeks, as one would hope that any politically-ambitious person would today – thus perhaps avoiding making the same mistakes that the Greeks endured and recorded for us.
Listen to him for a minute on the topic of the Greek city-states:
“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all – security, comfort and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted NOT to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free – and was never free again.”
The Athenians had developed a unique and substantially self-ruling form of government for their dynamic city that worked pretty well, but then abandoned it because it required some self-discipline along with the freedom of action and thought that their government allowed them to enjoy.
The lesson that Gibbon highlights, that history teaches, is: freedom and responsibility are different – but always linked together. One requires the other for its very existence in our lives.
The Apostle Paul – a profound student of human nature – thought along similar lines when he wrote to his disciple Timothy to explain why people act the way they do, even when it is apparent it will end badly! “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wonder away to myths.”
In short they chase after whomever is making promises that have "sex appeal" or promise easy – though absurd – solutions.
We currently have one of these myth-tellers in the White House, it seems to me, but I continue to hope that the brains under the "itching ears" of the American electorate will conclude, "fool me once, its your fault. But fool me twice, and its mine."
Our electorate needs to toss the socialistic junk that Mr. Obama advocates out on its ear, or we – like the ancient Greeks – will trade our freedom and our study Republic for a miserable mess of his socialist pottage!