"Stuart King" wrote in message . com...

At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in
the year 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.

Actually, the guys tame was Tytler, not Tyler. And, more importantly,
nobody can find anything like this in his writings. Then there's the
fact that some of it doesn't make sense (e.g., The average age of
greatest civilizations just 200 years??? That's clearly wrong, and
Tytler would've known it). Further, Tytler *does* write about the
fall of Athens in "Universal History..." and he makes it clear the
reasons Athens fell had nothing to do with this supposed "cycle of
democracy."

This entire quote from Tytler appears to be a recent fabrication.

snip bogus cycle of democracy-to-dictatorship

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

Nope. Professor Olson never wrote this. I asked him about it and he
says he had absolutely nothing to do with these statistics or the
"quotes" attributed to him. Someone just put his name on it
apparently because they thought it sounded more credible that way.

Population of counties won by:
Gore=127 million
Bush=143 million
Square miles of land won by:
Gore=580,000
Bush=2,2427,000

These numbers are right. They're from the 11/20/00 USA Today
newspaper.

States won by:
Gore=19
Bush=29

Actually the final state-counts were Gore = 20 and Bush = 30. The
numbers shown imply this was written before the Florida and New Mexico
results were determined. So this message has been floating around the
Internet for over 3 years...

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

This one is also wrong. The correct numbers (for 1999 and 2000) a

Gore = 6.5
Bush = 4.1

The ratio between these two numbers is about 1.6. Interestingly, you
get about this same ratio (within +/- 0.1) for the years 1995, 1996,
1997, and 1998 as well.

See: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp for further
discussion of data sources, etc.

Professor Olson adds:

"In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land 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..."

Again, Professor Olson had nothing to do with this. It's unclear who
made up these quotes, but I doubt he/she was a professor of any kind.


Pass this along.

Please don't. In fact, if you receive these bogus quotes/statistics
via e-mail, please refer the sender to:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

Conservatives look bad when they willingly repeat nonsense and
proclaim it true.

-Mike P.

p.s.: I apologize to those of you who read this newsgroup for
discussions about piloting, but people start to believe this stuff
when it goes unchallenged.