"Tom Sixkiller" wrote in message ...

I'm not so interested in authorship (argument from authority) as whether a
quote conforms to facts of reality.


Generally I'm not either. But in this particular case, the quote is
made much more interesting and given much greater credence simply
because it is attributed to a history professor (aka a very smart guy)
who wrote it about 200 years ago (thus making him somewhat
prophetic... at least in the minds of some conservatives).

So because this particular quote is so often used in this unusual way
(i.e., the smart, prophetic guy part), authorship is very relevant.

Consider this: nobody *really* cares that it was Samuel Clemens (I
think) who said "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are
statistics." They don't care because the quote conveys an interesting
idea that's fully independent of who said it. In the case of the
alleged Tytler quote, however, the fact that Tytler said it is (in my
opinion, at least) an essential part of why it's so popular.

As an aside, I was given an interesting link in another newsgroup.
This is from a FAQ at the University of Edinburgh Library (where
Tytler was a professor and they maintain a large collection of his
work). Basically it says they've searched and searched but can't find
anything like the alleged quote in their collection of Tytler's work.
I think it's pretty safe to say that Tytler is *not* responsible for
this quote. Here's the link:

http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/faqs/parqs.shtml#Aftytler1



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.

Not really; does historical FACT support the firt part of the quote?
Certainly the second part DOES NOT.

By the first part, do you mean?:

"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."

If so, then I don't disagree - at least not much. This part seems
almost prima facie true. Where I take issue with the quote is when it
starts talking about the 200-year average life of the world's greatest
civilizations (the number just seems 5X-10X too low).

But whether historical fact supports this first part of the quote is a
wholly separate question. I'm not so sure it does. There haven't
been all that many democracies in history, so it's a bit premature to
claim they are always "temporary in nature" and that they will fall
apart only when the majority starts voting themselves "gifts." This
isn't why the Athenian republic failed. And I can't think of any
democracy that has failed principally for this reason. So I doubt
there's historical support for it.

-Mike P.