How Long Do We Have? (original email)

4-12-06 About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:"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 voters discover 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 due to 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: 1. From bondage to spiritual faith; 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; 3. From courage to liberty; 4. From liberty to abundance; 5. From abundance to complacency;6. From complacency to apathy; 7. From apathy to dependence;8. From dependence back into bondage."Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 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 tax-paying citizens. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements living off government welfare."Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.Pass this along to help everyone realize that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom


Character and Integrity are not occasional traits.

--------------------- My response is below: -----------------------------------
Please forward my response to the person who sent this email to you.

Immediately upon reading this, I know it was dead wrong. As with all things generated by the right-wingers, this is filled with stupidity, misinformation, inaccurate statistics, erroneous logic, implied racism and outright lies. Or more concisely, just pure bullshit.
Yes, it's another "urban legend" floating around the Internet.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp
The worst, most ignorant and damaging lie is that statistic: Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore: 13.2; Bush: 2.1. On the above Snopes.com page, their calculation rendered this statistic:
· Gore: 6.5
· Bush: 4.1
Next, I went to see if there really was a "Professor Joseph Olson" and/or a "Hamline University" and/or if they had a School of Law. To my surprise, there is a Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law. Imagine my shock that there was even one true item in a right-winger's email.

http://www.hamline.edu/law/professors/joseph_olson.html
Interestingly, at the very bottom of his faculty profile page is this:
DISCLAIMER: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scotish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I've been trying to kill it for 3 years. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp.
As far as the implication that the Democrats receive their votes thusly:
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by tax-paying citizens. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements living off government welfare."

Even ignoring that Professor Olson himself has directly denied ever making any such statement, this is still a common misconception and with racist undertones. A lot of white folks believe that most people in the "red" or Republican areas (suburban and rural) pay most of the taxes while those darned Negros in the "blue" or Democratic areas (urban/metro) use most of the tax money through welfare and "government-owned tenements" (a term not only not used by Professor Olson, but also not used since the 1960s, so we can assume the liar/author is an older gentleman). But, by far, most of the government's money is earned and paid in the form of taxes by the Democratic areas. And then it goes to white Republicans in suburban and rural areas in the form of subsidies and government contracts: farmers, ranchers, miners, defense contractors other and businesses. Damned lazy welfare cheats and layabouts.

Here are quotes from a book written by John Sperling (an entrepreneur and the founder of the University of Phoenix) in collaboration with a team of political and economic analysts) called "The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America."

White, rural America, or Retro America, is heavily dependent on government subsidies that underpin oil, gas and coal interests, large-scale farming and military installations, and low-wage manufacturing. It receives far more in federal money than it pays in taxes each year.

The Republican Party has taken advantage of flaws in the outdated electoral college system, as well as constitutional guarantees given small states two centuries ago, to build a powerful base even as the Retro population shrinks. In 2004, 13 small states in Retro America with a combined population of just over 18 million had electoral college voting power equal to California, with its 34 million residents.

A "Retro" minority is effectively running roughshod on the values and agenda of the Metro majority who live in more urban, economically prosperous, and culturally diverse Metro urban-suburban areas.

Retro America is made up of 25 states where low wages, subsidies, religious zealotry and social rigidity trump diversity, innovation and educational and scientific achievement. They are states dominated by a mostly rural, conservative, intolerant white male political leadership (though many have large, poor minority populations) for whom social services, public education and economic and cultural change are more worrisome than welcome.

Metro America, on the other hand, is the nation's engine of economic growth and innovation. It has two-thirds of the country's population, mostly urban and suburban. Some Metro states have important agricultural sectors, but their real growth is in financial and other service industries, which alone account for 41% of the nation's total gross domestic product, as well as in major manufacturing.

More than 80% of all high technology jobs are in Metro America, and Metro America residents pay the taxes that subsidize Retro states. In the 10-year period between 1991-2001, nearly $1.7 trillion in federal tax transfers went from Metro America to Retro America. Ironically, Retro America politicians frequently speak against government spending and taxation, even as they work to preserve this skewed status quo.
The specific statistics behind the contention that Republican areas generally are the main recipients of government welfare are presented in this study:
http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/hweisberg/conference/Lacy-OSUConf.PDF
Look at the table at the bottom of page 16. It clearly shows that states that receive more money from the federal government than they paid in federal taxes VOTED PREDOMINATELY FOR BUSH IN THE 2000 ELECTION.

Lastly, look at the overall construction of the original email. It haphazardly mentions a hodgepodge of falsely attributed ideas about the cycle of democracy, some erroneous statistics, then attempts to arrive at a prejudiced conclusion.

Let's try to follow the logic:

1. Democracies are temporary (so are all forms of government--duh!).

2. Democracies become fiscally endangered when voters elect candidates who give them pork from the public treasury (my God, that actually makes sense).

3. This is necessarily followed by a dictatorship (that's a non-sequitur: no examples, no reasons, no proof).

4. The email then presents a rip-off of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of dying: cycles that democracies supposedly "always" follow from birth to death. Again, no examples, no reasons, no evidence. Just believe it and shut up. And the Snopes.com link above shows that the author (Tytler, not Tyler) attributed to those stages never wrote anything even remotely close to this. This "stages of democracies" wasn't written 200 years ago by a Scottish history professor. It was conjured up by some modern-day lame-o.

5. Next, it jumps to phony statistics and statements from Professor Olson about the 2000 presidential election. First of all, any statistics from the 2000 election will be flawed, because of the massive fraud committed by the Republican Party: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=29&row=2\
http://www.legitgov.org/index_hot_April5.html

6. Then the lie about how counties that voted for Gore had a murder rate over SIX TIMES that of counties that voted for Bush. An absolute lie.

7. Then the email jumps to the erroneously attributed and factually incorrect statement about how "red" or Bush areas were mostly tax-paying citizens, while "blue" or Gore areas were mostly filled with people living in government-owned tenements and on welfare.

8. More bullshit about what Professor Olson supposedly "believes": that the U.S. as a whole is in between the "complacency and apathy" phases and that 40% of the U.S. population has reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

9. A puzzling statement is tacked on to the end of this email: Character and Integrity are not occasional traits. This is a truism, yes, but has nothing to do with the rest of the email.

Similarly, I could compose an email in which I invent some idea and, to give it more weight, falsely attribute it to a dead author. Then I could fill the email with prejudices that suit my political leanings. I could throw in phony statistics. And I could staple a truism no one could possibly disagree with (like "a man is only as good as his word") hoping that its truth would make the rest of my silly email true. Then I could send it to people who I thought wouldn't think it through, double-check the accuracy of the attributions and facts, and who wouldn't call me on my bullshit.

Except maybe one person. Like me. Who spends hours each day fighting the juggernaut of ignorance coming his way via the Internet.

To prevent further idiocy, please refer the author of this email to this page of logical fallacies.
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html
In particular, he should learn about non-sequiturs. The term translated from Latin means, "it does not follow."