"Mike Powell" wrote in message
om...
"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).

I'm not aware that those are the reasons it was given credibility. The first
time I heard it several years ago, it just had a name attached to it with no
mention of his credentials.


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.

And that's my point. I have a wholeslew of quotes that go back to antiquity
and have no known author (note, too, how many are merely listed as
"Anonymous".

I doubt 1% of people know who Tyler/Tytler is.


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
[snip]

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.

Not exactly, but Athens did get very lazy and complacent as they did have
what we'd call "collectivism".


And I can't think of any
democracy that has failed principally for this reason. So I doubt
there's historical support for it.

Rome, and a few of the quasi-democracies in Europe. They didn't necessarily
fail, but they sure stunted themselves.

Time will tell (and I thinks that's what the quote represents).