O.T. Interesting History Lesson

VERY INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON



At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution. In
1787, Alexander Tyler - a Scottish history professor at the University of
Edinborough - had this to say about "The Fall of the Athenian Republic" some
2,000 years prior:


47 days to go..
THE FALL OF THE ATHENIAN REPUBLIC... "A democracy is always temporary in
nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A
democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that
they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that
moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most
benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will
finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a
dictatorship."



"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of
history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations
always progressed through the following sequence: >From bondage to spiritual
faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From
liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; >From complacency to
apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."



Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St.Paul,
Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent
American Presidential election:



Population of counties won by: Gore 127 million, Bush 143 million.



Square miles of land won by: Gore 580,000, Bush 2,427,000.



States won by: Gore 19, Bush 29.



Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore 13.2, Bush 2.1.



Professor Olson adds, "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was
mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country.
Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned
tenements and living off government welfare..."Olson believes the U.S. is
now somewhere between the "apathy" and the "complacency" phase of Professor
Tyler's definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation's
population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

On 28 Feb 2004 17:47:21 GMT, rgrew176.DeleteThis@aol.com (RGrew176) wrote:

 >VERY INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON
 >
 >
 >
 >At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution. In
 >1787, Alexander Tyler - a Scottish history professor at the University of
 >Edinborough - had this to say about "The Fall of the Athenian Republic" some
 >2,000 years prior:

*yawn*

This is the same urband legend that has been circulating since 2000 and has been
soundly debunked.

From snopes.com, in part:

Tyler's book, Universal history, from the creation of the world to the
beginning of the eighteenth century, is available for viewing and
searching on-line. The complete text was searched for each of the
following phrases:
Athenian Republic
democracy
generous gifts
public treasury
loose fiscal
fiscal
bondage
200 years
two hundred years
spiritual faith

In no case was text identified that was remotely similar in words or
intent to the alleged Tytler quote.

4. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University is not the source of any
of the statistics or the text attributed to him. Professor Olson was
contacted (by me) via e-mail, and he confirmed that he had no authorship
or involvement in this matter. And, as Fayette Citizen editor Dave
Hamrick wrote back in January 2001:

I really enjoyed one recent message that was circulated extremely
widely, at least among conservatives. It gave several interesting
"facts" supposedly compiled by statisticians and political scientists
about the counties across the nation that voted for George Bush and the
ones that voted for Al Gore in the recent election.

Supposedly, the people in the counties for Bush had more education, more
income, ad infinitum, than the counties for Gore.

I didn't have time to check them all out, but I was curious about one
item in particular... the contention that the murder rate in the Gore
counties was about a billion times higher than in the Bush counties.


This was attributed to a Professor Joseph Olson at the Hamline
University School of Law. I never heard of such a university, but went
online and found it. And Prof. Olson does exist.

"Now I'm getting somewhere," I thought.

But in response to my e-mail, Olson said the "research" was attributed
to him erroneously. He said it came from a Sheriff Jay Printz in
Montana. I e-mailed Sheriff Printz, and guess what? He didn't do the
research either, and didn't remember who had e-mailed it to him.

In other words, he got the same legend e-mailed to him and passed it on
to Olson without checking it out, and when Olson passed it on, someone
thought it sounded better if a law professor had done the research, and
so it grew.

Who knows where it originally came from, but it's just not true.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->