"Tom Sixkiller" wrote in message ...

I'm sorry, I should have said the CONTENT was fairly accurate, not the
attribution. I have no doubt that the cite of Tyler, Tytler, Tittie, or
whomever is wrong. And as I said, the second part is really bogus
regardless of who wrote it, in either the 18th or 20th century.

So, all in all, I agree with your conclusion.

Ah, now I understand what you were getting at. Sorry -- I thought you
meant the quote was valid, but the date of the quote was in question
(which seemed kind of a strange argument). I should've read more
carefully.

I agree that a democracy is doomed when its citizens start "voting
themselves largesse from the public treasury." That part seems true
enough.

I think a large part of the appeal of the alleged Tytler quote is due
to the implication that an expert in world history from the early
1800s *predicted* the United States would suffer from moral decay and
"loose fiscal policy," which will be evident by the masses always
voting for whomever promises them the most kickbacks from the public
treasury. Further, he supposedly predicted this would happen in about
200 years! Amazingly this is just about equal to the age of the
United States (especially considering the fact that this quote seems
to have made its first appearance in the 1980s).

If, as I contend, Tytler had nothing to do with this quote, then it
becomes *much* less compelling. I doubt this quote would be at all
popular if, instead of Tytler, it was said to have been written by
someone in the 1980s -- especially if they had no particular knowledge
of world history as appears to be the case since the alleged quote
does not accurately describe what it's supposed to describe: the fall
of the Athenian Republic.

If instead of "Alexander Fraser Tytler, Scottish History Professor in
1801 wrote the following...," the quote were to read, "I was having
some beers with my cousin Hank last week and he said the
following...," then I really doubt anyone would think this quote was
worth the bandwidth used to send it along.

I guess my point here is "authorship counts." Note also how popular
the murder-rate comparison is. I doubt those numbers would be as
widely circulated if someone hadn't slipped Professor Olson's name in
front of them. People look to authorship in an effort to judge
whether an idea is likely to be true.

So if Tytler isn't the source of the quote (and I'm pretty darn sure
he isn't), suddenly it loses just about all of its credibility.

-Mike P.