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Here's an inflammatory e-mail forward.
It starts out with the premise.
>Life Cycle of Democracy
>
> At about the time our original 13 states adopted the new constitution, in
> the year 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 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 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:
>
> >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;
Interesting, huh? While I can't vouch for the veracity of the quote, I can say I see parallels to U.S. history. Bondage, being "taxation without representation." Spiritual faith, I'm not sure about. Courage for the war, Liberty for its result. Abundance for what we got, all the way through the industrial boom of the fifties. Then complacency. It seems like we're heading into apathy, but I'm really not sure if that's changed in my lifetime. But then I'm not sure what the apathy is about. I guess it's because people who don't care, need rulers to run things fo rthem, and then we get dependent.
Now let's take a look at the facts that the author of this message hopes to use to prove that we're heading for "bondage," and the method by which this will happen.
> Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St Paul,
> Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent
> Presidential election:
>
> Population of counties won by:
> Gore = 127 million
> Bush = 143 million
>
> Square miles of land won by:
> Gore=580,000
> Bush = 22,427,000
Seems to show an urban versus rural split
>
> States won by:
> Gore = 19
> Bush = 29
Again, the population density factor.
>
> Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
> Gore = 13.2
> Bush = 2.1
Oh, you gotta love this. It's irrelevant to the point he's trying to make. That means it's nothing more than a scare tactic. But I think you can see that specifically what he's trying to do is make a connection between welfare users and criminals.
>
> Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was
> land mostly owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country.
>
> Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned
> tenements and living off government welfare..."
First of all, almost all land in this country, where people live, is owned by taxpayers. But if you guess that what he's trying to say is that the voters in question own the property that they're living in/on, I think that it's moreso the case for the rural populace, since there are more rental properties in urban areas.
Second, the author make it sound like the election was rural landowners versus urban tenement dwellers. WTF? What percentage fo the poplulation does he think earns welfare? And why does he think that crime and welfare are the reasons that people vote the way they do? Personally, I think that the urban versus rural split is due to how people value the contributions of their neighbors. In cities, people understand the value of cooperation.
>
> Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and
> "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.
>
This really says nothing about our society in general. He's jumped to the conclusion that the reason we vote Democrat is because we want not to be punished for the crimes we commit or that we want to continue to get our government handouts. He totally ignores the real reasons we vote that way. Because we don't want government handouts to big businiess. We want a healthy environment to live in. We don't support the military industrial complex. We don't want crooked businessment and other criminals in office. There are dozens of other reasons like this, but the author of this piece is exaggerating one idea to convince like-minded readers that the other side is bad.
It starts out with the premise.
>Life Cycle of Democracy
>
> At about the time our original 13 states adopted the new constitution, in
> the year 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 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 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:
>
> >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;
Interesting, huh? While I can't vouch for the veracity of the quote, I can say I see parallels to U.S. history. Bondage, being "taxation without representation." Spiritual faith, I'm not sure about. Courage for the war, Liberty for its result. Abundance for what we got, all the way through the industrial boom of the fifties. Then complacency. It seems like we're heading into apathy, but I'm really not sure if that's changed in my lifetime. But then I'm not sure what the apathy is about. I guess it's because people who don't care, need rulers to run things fo rthem, and then we get dependent.
Now let's take a look at the facts that the author of this message hopes to use to prove that we're heading for "bondage," and the method by which this will happen.
> Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St Paul,
> Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent
> Presidential election:
>
> Population of counties won by:
> Gore = 127 million
> Bush = 143 million
>
> Square miles of land won by:
> Gore=580,000
> Bush = 22,427,000
Seems to show an urban versus rural split
>
> States won by:
> Gore = 19
> Bush = 29
Again, the population density factor.
>
> Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
> Gore = 13.2
> Bush = 2.1
Oh, you gotta love this. It's irrelevant to the point he's trying to make. That means it's nothing more than a scare tactic. But I think you can see that specifically what he's trying to do is make a connection between welfare users and criminals.
>
> Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was
> land mostly owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country.
>
> Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned
> tenements and living off government welfare..."
First of all, almost all land in this country, where people live, is owned by taxpayers. But if you guess that what he's trying to say is that the voters in question own the property that they're living in/on, I think that it's moreso the case for the rural populace, since there are more rental properties in urban areas.
Second, the author make it sound like the election was rural landowners versus urban tenement dwellers. WTF? What percentage fo the poplulation does he think earns welfare? And why does he think that crime and welfare are the reasons that people vote the way they do? Personally, I think that the urban versus rural split is due to how people value the contributions of their neighbors. In cities, people understand the value of cooperation.
>
> Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and
> "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.
>
This really says nothing about our society in general. He's jumped to the conclusion that the reason we vote Democrat is because we want not to be punished for the crimes we commit or that we want to continue to get our government handouts. He totally ignores the real reasons we vote that way. Because we don't want government handouts to big businiess. We want a healthy environment to live in. We don't support the military industrial complex. We don't want crooked businessment and other criminals in office. There are dozens of other reasons like this, but the author of this piece is exaggerating one idea to convince like-minded readers that the other side is bad.
