TENURE

On a cold winter day, Professor Ray Small of the Department of Political Science at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, stepped up to the podium and announced, "Students, this will be the last class I teach at Cornell. My wife, Anita, as you know, is a professor at the Center for Law and Society here at Cornell. We are now both tenured after 22 years of faithful service to this quality institution and have decided to retire. At this point we're not sure what is ahead of us. All we know is that we're stepping down as teachers."

A voice at the back of the lecture hall spoke up: "Dr. Small, we'll miss you!" The students applauded in agreement.

The professor continued, "As you know, here at Cornell we teach one course at a time for 18 days as part of our immersion system of teaching. We've covered a lot of ground over the past two weeks. But now I want to end this course with a very difficult topic: the death of American democracy. Some of you will be selected to be Washington interns during the next semester, and you'll see for yourself what I mean. It's a sad subject with which to end this course, but I feel I must alert you to a frightening reality which may help you to make career decisions in the future."

At this point Dr. Small projected the following quote on the screen in the front of the hall:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result 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 200 years.

"This quote is attributed to a British professor, Alexander Fraser Tytler, around 1800. Back in the late 18th century, men in England, France, and the American Colonies conceived a new type of regime that would prevent the tyranny of the absolutist monarchies that reigned at the time. They devised a balance of power between governmental institutions and a periodic election in order to purge the system of excessive corruption and entrenched power. The democratic form of government employed those principles and flourished over the next two centuries.

"But now, in its third century of existence, America is producing dysfunctional, indeed self-destructive, forms of governance. The United States has been deadlocked in the monumental issue of budget deficits versus entitlements, unable to cut spending or raise taxes. And worse yet, 80 percent of the welfare money is absorbed by the bureaucracy and doesn't even get to the poor while the debt keeps growing. Future generations are being sacrificed to the present generation. The resulting frustration can lead to economic depression and political upheaval, even racial or class riots.

"I don't mean to scare you. But it's a very scary prospect that we will discuss over the next four days. You will be asked to develop a one-page thesis and solution to the situation. There can be no one solution, but your creativity and logic will be graded.

"And please keep in mind that in a democracy all things are decided by competitive self-interest. For example, if a city council decides a light rail is needed, the citizens are taxed. But the truth about the real cost is obscured by personal self-interest before the community's interest. The money supply seems infinite. As a result, the underestimated cost is a debt which, like a can, gets kicked down the road. At some point the unfunded liabilities become unsustainable and the system collapses.

"Your assignment will be to develop a plan, process, or solution that prevents, not delays, the day of reckoning. Congress can't do it. But maybe a fresh idea coming out of these cornfields will be a useful antidote for what ails our nation."

FRONT PORCH

Thirty-two miles east of Mount Vernon on Old Highway 30 is the small farming community of DeWitt. About 2 miles east of State Highway 61 is Humeston Road, and about a half-mile north on Humeston Road is the 400-acre farm of Brady and Cathy Small. A quarter-mile gravel road leads to the farmhouse, a series of white one-story rooms added on in different directions as finances allowed. A red metal roof holds the architecture together; one can only imagine the clamor inside during a summer hailstorm. The house and guest house are surrounded by a half-acre of grass enclosed by a white picket fence. Red brick sidewalks ring the modest abode, and visitors are greeted by four rocking chairs on the covered front porch.

Ray and Anita enjoyed a sumptuous turkey dinner as if out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Afterward, the four Smalls took their seats in the rocking chairs to enjoy a glass of elderberry wine and review current events. Brady Small was proud to report that the corn harvest would set a farm record. Cathy and Anita looked at email photos of Ray and Anita's daughter, Emily, at summer camp in Wisconsin.

Brady Small, who was not a man for small talk, asked his son, "Ray, now that the two of you are retired, what are you going to do?"

"Glad you asked," Ray replied. "Anita and I have talked it over, and she supports me running for Congress."

"Congress?" the proud parent asked rather quizzically. "That seems like a pretty big leap for a college professor."

"Well, Dad, it's not as large a leap as you might think," Ray said with a slight smile on his face.

Brady pressed on, asking, "What's your rationale, and where does the money come from?"

Ray was quick to respond. "Our retirement from the college is nice, but it won't sustain us in old age," he said. "We need to amass wealth now in the next five or six years in order to have the freedom to do the things we want to do."

"Why in the next five years?" Brady asked. "What's the urgency?"

"You see, Dad, the last four days of my last class really clarified the picture for me," Ray said.

"How so, Ray?" asked the gentleman farmer.

"Well, my research indicates that this country is headed directly into another depression, one that will make the Great Depression of the 1930s seem like a cakewalk," Ray responded with an air of authority in his voice. "The debt is unsustainable, the unfunded liabilities cannot be met, the poverty class continues to grow and is prone to riot, and any day a foreign creditor could ask for a partial repayment in gold, which we don't have and would cause the stock and commodity markets to crash — and I mean plummet to unchartered depths."

"OK. Let's say you're right," Brady said. "How does this relate...