E-mail Propaganda

You may have received the following e-mail in recent days. I have received it twice. I have reproduced it in full below. If you have already read it, skip to the end of the italicized text.


How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen 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 earlier:

'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 they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.'

'From that moment on, the majority always vote 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, those 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 Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of 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 forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.


This message was debunked in 2006 by several people, and you can check their research about Alexander Tyler and Edinburgh University by using your own internet search tools. On Google, the entry "alexander tyler 8 steps" has 652,000 results. There are almost a million other results.

If you check out Alexander Tyler, you will find that he did not write anything resembling the words attributed to him. If you check out Hemline University, you will find that it is really Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Joseph Olson is a member of the Hamline’s Law School faculty, but he denies ever having said the words in the e-mail: He wrote:

DISCLAIMER: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish 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 since December 2000. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp.

This message and its continued voyage through our internet points toward the problem that I discussed in my blog posting, The March of Folly. The writer is a clever propagandist, who knows that many of us accept what we read without question. Particularly anything reputedly written by a professor or philosopher. He, or she, adds a few statistics to look scientific and academically sound and catches those who will repeat them to their like-minded friends.

However, if readers had been careful, they would not have had to double-check the assertions on the internet. There were pleanty of mistakes in the text to make it questionable:

"About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787…"
The thirteen states did not adopt the Constitution in 1787. The Constitutional Convention approved the document to be submitted to the various states’ legislatures for ratification. According to Article Seven of the US Constitution, it would be established and take effect when nine of the thirteen states ratified it. Virginia became the ninth state to approve ratification on June 25, 1788. George Washington was inaugurated President in 1789.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
The civilizations of China, Greece, the Inca, the Ottomans, and Rome each lasted far longer than 200 years. We may not admire many aspects of their culture, but they were civilizations that added to the pool of technology, art, science and philosophy that we find ourselves immersed in.

Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
This may be true, but is an inert fact. Neither party won "square miles of land." The parties won votes. Wyoming (3 electoral votes) is bigger in size than New York, but the population of New York is much greater (33 electoral votes). And does it have to be pointed out that many of the states that voted for Bush comprised the former Confederate States of America?

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
The author’s choice of words reminds me of the character Bill Cutting who railed against the Irish immigrants in Martin Scorcese’s’ film, The Gangs of New York. And all the righteous Americans like Father Coughlin who railed against Italians. Poles, and Jews in the twenties and thirties. And in the seventies all the righteous who railed against all the Vietnamese immigrants who were taking all the jobs and all the college scholarships from real Americans. The illegals are not criminal invaders like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, and by now, most of them have already returned to their home countries, because a depression has established itself in the USA. Also, a writer, whose background includes teaching grammar and composition, would have circled in red pencil the author’s use of the possessive case in the word illegal’s, instead of the plural illegals.

Some facts required a quick check at the national archives website:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
That count is missing 2 states. My count resulted in the following: George Bush and Richard Cheney won 271 electoral votes in 28 states. Albert Gore, Jr. and Joseph Lieberman won 266 electoral votes in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Bush and Cheney won 25 votes in Florida because the Supreme Court of the United States stopped the state’s vote recount, which was indicating that Gore would win. If Gore had received the Florida electoral vote, the count would have been Bush, 246 and Gore, 291.

A notable feature of this e-mail is the lack of authorship. Who wrote this mess?

At the bottom of the e-mail is the following:

To send e-mail faster without improving your typing skills . Get your Hotmail® account.
The writer uses Hotmail.

This communication is for use by the intended recipient and contains information that may be Privileged, confidential or copyrighted under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system. Unless explicitly and conspicuously designated as "E-Contract Intended", this e-mail does not constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment, or an acceptance of a contract offer. This e-mail does not constitute a consent to the use of sender's contact information for direct marketing purposes or for transfers of data to third parties.
Francais Deutsch Italiano Espanol Portugues Japanese Chinese Korean
http://www.DuPont.com/corp/email_disclaimer.html

The writer may work for DuPont, but nothing in this e-mail is privileged and it is designed to be sent to everyone who will read it and pass it on.

We can’t keep people from sending out this kind of e-mail; nor do we want to. But if the e-mail contains another e-mail that is unsigned, then we should delete it after reading it, and not send it on.

The internet is there for everyone’s views. The next time we receive something like this, I hope we will read it to keep informed of others’ views. But let’s analyze it and add our agreements and disagreements to it before sending it on. Let’s stop circulating this kind of writing, unchallenged.