Cycle

"Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent--the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free."
--H.L. Mencken
Preface to the first edition of The American Credo : A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind (1920)