Urban Legends

A friend sent me this email the other day:

I don't know who wrote this astonishing read. A sad thing about it is the fact that we seem to be on a relentlessly short path to national suicide. How Long Do We Have? About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, 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 earlier: "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 they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote 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." The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage.

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by:
Gore: 19
Bush: 29

Square miles of land won by:
Gore: 580,000
Bush: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by:
Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million

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

Professor Olson adds, "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned 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 illegals and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

So I did my due diligence and found it on Snopes.com. Of course, as expected, it's not accurate. There was no "Alexander Tyler", Professor Olson didn't do the research, Gore actually took 20 states and Bush 30, and murder rates are closer to 6.5 to 4.1. Fine. Another inaccurate email floating around the Internet. What's new?

I wonder, however, why this kind of thing floats around the Internet for so long? What is it that causes it to circulate? Why is it still here? Likely, the first reason is that it strikes a harmonic note with people. They see truth in it. And when it strikes that note, they pass it on. Couple that with the fact that, seeing truth in it, they tend not to be critical. Critical thinking is something most people reserve for the select few. They might try some critical thinking on something they really don't like. They might allow the critical thinking of others to influence them. But it seems clear that very few who pass this stuff on actually examine the truth claims of a story like this, and that's likely because they agree with it. But I think there is another noteworthy reason that it survives.

Flaws and all, I think there is enough truth in the content that it gives people something to consider. I think, for instance, that, while no Scottish history professor named Alexander Tyler wrote this, there is still truth to the notion -- "A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury" -- and people recognize that. I think that, while Joseph Olson didn't actually do this research and there are factual flaws, there is still enough truth to make the point. Look, for instance, at the 2000 election result map. The number of states may not be accurate or the square miles of land or the numbers of counties or even the murder rate, but it is clear that the "blue" areas tend to be larger cities and the "red" areas tend to be less populated. The "blue" areas likely have higher crime rates and higher welfare rates than the "red". And while "the square miles of land won by" is irrelevant (since land doesn't vote) and murder rates aren't a valid means of determining who should be president, it still points to the cycle that is seen in the Bible and explained in that eight-step process from bondage to bondage. In other words, to many people it strikes a harmonic note because, despite the details that are flawed, the concept is likely true.

Is the U.S. doomed to collapse in five years? I think that's impossible to say and, in fact, unlikely. Is it a problem that much of America is becoming government-dependent instead of independent? It would, in my view, be foolish to deny that fact. Errors aside, the story points to a serious problem. While we need to be clear on the truth and verify our facts and sources, we cannot afford to dismiss something as serious as this because the murder rate numbers aren't quite right. We need to look to ourselves to make sure we're not in that "abundance to complacency to apathy to dependence" category, and we need to pray for those in government.