I once was engaged in an interesting e-mail exchange with someone whose opinion I valued a great deal.  It went back and forth some as we discussed democracy and its future prospects here in the United States.   We touched on the "Tytler Cycle" and many other items.  I thought this discourse useful for those who want to consider our current state of affairs.  By the way as a side note, apparently the Tytler Cycle is a bit of a misnomer as it appears to be an amalgamation of two different quotes not originally from the purported author.  Nonetheless, the concept is what is more important than that technicality.

The exchange begins below:

I think the Tytler cycle is largely accurate and that it does reflect on the flawed nature of humans.  The striking thing is that because democracy is a product of flawed humans, it contains within itself the seeds of its own demise, so that even though it may well be better than alternatives, its aspirations are ultimately somewhat utopian.  

Unlike Marxism and those who like any form of millennial apocalypse, the utopians of democracy may be a bit more tempered in their enthusiasms.  It seems they think it possible that while they have not necessarily "solved" the flaw of man, they have at least tamed it enough that it can be sublimated into other pursuits- like seeking wealth and recognition in the context of community. The Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons of a democratic age are more likely to be a Bill Gates or, at worst, a Rockefeller than the military conquerors of old.  That was, if I recollect, a significant element of Fukuyama's thesis about "recognition."

Yet, it seems that even the balances of power brought about  through the separation of powers in the Montesquieu sense, though very wisely devised, still cannot overcome human nature's desire for power and/or ease.  Those seem to me the Scylla and Charybdis through which a form of government that would be permanent would have to sail.  The desire for power of those who feed off of it and the general sloth of the many in the so-called "masses."  Those two very human traits unwittingly conspire together to overthrow the only form of government that can bring a modicum of meaningfully peaceful recognition to the human condition.  But they always do conspire and set the Tytler cycle (or, depending on one's taste, the Toynbee or Spengler or even Gibbon cycle) in motion.  

So I do think it is the human condition that is the fatal flaw, unfortunately, I think that flaw overwhelms even the best efforts to compensate for it.  The best we can hope for is a constant shifting between various poles of the condition in order to walk the tightrope that gives us the best possible life.  In that sense its a constant and noble pursuit.

Navigating a world filled with flawed humans requires a great deal of dexterity.  Institutions, even the best, atrophy and require someone like a "statesman" to reinvigorate them.  Each cycle of atrophy and resurrection plays out over a long period of time but those are the oscillations that comprise History.  The Tytler Cycle is inescapable.  We don't have any Pericles, Ciceros or Washingtons available to us.  Democracy will fade, only to return.  Its just I fear we are living in the waning time of one great period.  

Again, though, we have no choice but to struggle mightily, even if we fail.  I know Teddy Roosevelt would not be your favorite, but this seems very appropriate,

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." 

After I wrote the above, I began reading Kissinger's memoirs ( believe it or not I have never read them, but have most of his other works).   I came across this and while not entirely surprised at its similarity to my own thoughts, it was interesting how much I seem  to relate to his tragic sense of the human condition.

"History knows no resting places and no plateaus.  All societies of which history informs us went through periods of decline; most of them eventually collapsed.  Yet there is a margin between necessity and accident, in which the statesman by perseverance and intuition must choose and thereby shape the destiny of his people.  To ignore objective conditions is perilous; to hide behind historical inevitability is tantamount to moral abdication; it is to neglect the elements of strength and hope and inspiration which through the centuries have sustained mankind.  The statesman's responsibility is to struggle against transitoriness and not to insist that he be paid in the coin of eternity.  He may know that history is the foe of permanence; but no leader is entitled to resignation.  He owes it to his people to strive, to create, and to resist the decay that besets all human institutions."