Topic: A Scary Obituary

[oldcoastie6468]

Via email:

One Scary Obituary

In 1887 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 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."


The Obituary follows:

Born 1776, Died 2012

It doesn't hurt to read this several times.

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

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

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.

Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income 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..

[IronDioPriest]

"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."

...Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy...

I'd say we are smack in the middle of the "dependence" phase, moving toward "bondage" like a freight train driven by Satan himself.

[AlanS]

"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."

...Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy...

I'd say we are smack in the middle of the "dependence" phase, moving toward "bondage" like a freight train driven by Satan himself.

With his foot to the floor on the accelerator.

[Alphabet Soup]

...but nothing that 20 (or 60 or 120) more days of unemployment benefits wouldn't fix - right?

 

[Pandora]

Sure, why not.  It's an economy boosting program, just ask Stretch Pelousy.

/Can't stand it.

[ChrstnHsbndFthr]

"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."

...Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy...

I'd say we are smack in the middle of the "dependence" phase, moving toward "bondage" like a freight train driven by Satan himself.

ummm..uh.... well.....uh...NO!!!!!!

[Pandora]

"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."

...Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy...

I'd say we are smack in the middle of the "dependence" phase, moving toward "bondage" like a freight train driven by Satan himself.

ummm..uh.... well.....uh...NO!!!!!!

Really, "uh ... NO!"  You wanna unstick yer head there, fella?

[trapeze]

Okay, well...I hate to be Johnny Raincloud but this is a total fake.

I am ALWAYS extremely suspicious/skeptical of these email spam things. I used to* have my email inbox inundated with them from well-meaning friends and relatives who know I am of a conservative political bent and sincerely believe that I will enjoy reading this stuff. And that's true...I would...IF they were true. But, I have yet to come across one...ONE...that is. They are always fake and this one is no exception.

When I read the first post in this thread the very next thing I did was to search the name of the email author. It took about five seconds. Here is the link to the professor's page. If you read down his page a few paragraphs you will find this:

DISCLAIMER: There are a series of emails 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, suicide rates, or ANYTHING ELSE. I did not author any part of either email. I've been trying to kill this fallacy for 10 years. I didn't have any part of it in 2000, and I still have no part of the email in regards to the 2008 election.

And yeah, it is in bold face print on his page just so that it is very easy to notice.

I don't care for the leftist politics of the snopes.com** website owner/operators but they do perform a valuable service by investigating and debunking these (and other) absolute pure bullsh*t frauds. In this case snopes says that there is zero proof of who the original email author is. They do go through some of the statistics listed in the email and some of them are correct (or mostly correct) and some of them are false. For instance, there is no Alexander "Tyler" who ever authored anything about the Athenian Republic.

So...there it is. This email, while it sounds good, is too good to be true.


*I say, "used to" because I would always respond back to whoever sent it to me (and I would usually copy anyone else in a group email) and explain, politely and methodically, why the email was bogus, why they should be skeptical of such things and why it is sort of ridiculous to send something around to everyone you know without first verifying that it is authentic. After a while I mostly stopped getting these things. Either these people wised up or they got tired of having me notify everyone in the group email that they had been suckered. 

This is a form of chain letter...one of the earliest forms of spam (or virus) that predates the computer age, in a way. It is authored by assholes and I wouldn't hesitate to severely beat to a pulp anyone I knew to be responsible for its creation.

Yeah, I know...I'm sort of an asshole, myself, for being so hard on this crap but that's a character flaw that I will just have to live with, I suppose.


**One of the most recent techniques for the email chain letter spammer is to put a line at the bottom or the top that claims it is "snopes verified true" which is ALWAYS a sign that it is completely false. These clods count on no one bothering to verify it themselves and almost no one does. So on and on it goes until a jerk like me breaks the chain.

[BigAlSouth]

When these "remarkable" posts end with the suggestion: Forward this to all your friends", it's usually a spam generator meant to capture the email addresses OF ALL YOUR FRIENDS.

Yeah, Snopes can be yo friend. (So can Google. Understand me NSA?)

[Libertas]

   AlGore internets!