============== FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ==============
America First Party
1630 A 30th Street #111
Boulder, Colorado 80301
http://www.AmericaFirstParty.org
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Court Affirms: Right to Bear Arms Predates U.S. ConstitutionBoulder, CO - The America First Party applauds the D. C. Courtof Appeals for its recent decision to throw out the District of Columbia's oppressive 31 year old gun regulations. Its strongly worded defense of the Second Amendment asserts that the right tobear arms is individual, not collective, and that the right toindividual firearm ownership pre-existed the Constitution.
If the District appeals, the case will pass to the Supreme Court and hopefullyresult in the overturning of unconstitutional gun regulationsnationwide.The District of Columbia and most Federal appeals courts holdthat the right to bear arms is a collective right wholly predicated on membership in a militia. Some postulate that since militias nolonger exist, the Second Amendment is no longer effective.
This absurd interpretation is contradicted by the fact that the first nine articles of the Bill of Rights relate to individual rights. While affirming this point, the D. C. Appeals Court also observed thatif mere defense of militias had been the object of the SecondAmendment, the first Congress would have likely enacted a more directstatement to that effect.
National Chairman Jonathan Hill stated,
"If there is a naturaland unalienable right to life, as the Declaration states, then thereis necessarily a natural right to defend that life. In some circumstances, an effective defense is not practical without a firearm. This means that there is a natural right to bear armsthat pre-exists the Second Amendment and which has existed since the invention of firearms. The Second Amendment only seeks toguarantee that this pre-existing right 'shall not be infringed.'"
National Secretary John Pittman Hey stated,
"The D. C. AppealsCourt acknowledged that the right to bear arms relates to 'privatepurposes' as well as public civic purposes such as maintenance of themilitia. These private purposes, the court stated, were understood toinclude defense against violent criminals and resistance to 'tyrannical government.'"
The America First Party platform expresses support for Second Amendment rights as guaranteed by the United States Constitutionand as given to us by Almighty God. The platform declares this tobe an individual's right, and calls for repeal of all unconstitutionalgun laws.
Contact:
Jonathan Hill,
National Chairman 1-866-SOS-USA1, ext 4
John Schweingrouber,
Press Secretary, 1-866-SOS-USA1, ext. 2
##30##Informer mailing list
Informer@americafirstparty.org
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End of Informer Digest, Vol 33, Issue 1
AMERICA'S TREASONOUS LILLYPUTIANS
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March 18, 2007
Mid-East Policy v. the U.S. Constitution: GML 2007 to Debate Divisive Question
Register for “Must-See” LIVE Conference Pay-Per-View Petitions Served on Government
We The People Foundation is pleased to announce the final Agenda and a list of confirmed speakers for our Give Me liberty 2007 conference. You will notice a significant departure in subject matter from what we had in mind when we first decided to sponsor GML 2007.
But for our review of two publications and a certain clause of the U.S. Constitution, we would have settled on a different agenda months ago.
The course and speed we were taking to GML 2007 were significantly altered, first when an 82-page Working Paper that was published last year by two university Professors came to our attention, and then, by a 264-page book (actually a detailed historical report) that was published last year by former President Jimmy Carter.
These two documents caused a great awaking on our part. We discovered one, if not the root cause of the steady growth of a police state in America and the resultant erosion of our individual Rights, Liberties and Freedoms. We were compelled to research the subject further. We found verification of the facts and our deductive reasoning that led to our controversial findings.
We instinctively felt the Constitution was being violated. We needed to identify the provision(s) of the U.S. Constitution that were at issue and could best be used by the People as a sword to address and solve the problem. We settled on the appropriate constitutional clause and then decided we had no choice but to add the matter to the GML 2007 agenda and begin a search for appropriate speakers.
The Two Professors
The Working Paper that caught our attention was published last March by Professor John Mearsheimer from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Professor Stephen Walt from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The Working Paper is titled, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”
A link to the Working Paper is provided at the end of this article. Everyone interested in determining a root cause of America’s War on Terrorism and developing Police State is encouraged to read the entire paper.
We all have our pre-conceived notions regarding Israel, the Palestinians, their Arab neighbors, 9-11 and the “War on Terrorism.” We certainly had ours. However, our minds are always open to facts, more than opinions. The facts presented in the Working Paper, coupled with the facts presented in Carter’s report have produced an Aristotelian concept, a paradigm shift in our thinking. We ask everyone to try to put their pre-conceived notions and prejudices aside and read the Working Paper and Carter’s Book with an open mind.
As the Professors say in the introduction to the Working Paper, “Some readers will find this analysis disturbing, but the facts recounted here are not in serious dispute among scholars. Indeed, our account relies heavily on the work of Israeli scholars and journalists, who deserve great credit for shedding light on these issues. We also rely on evidence provided by respected Israeli and international human rights organizations. Similarly, our claims about the Lobby’s impact rely on testimony from the Lobby’s own members, as well as testimony from politicians who have worked with them. Readers may reject our conclusion, of course, but the evidence on which they rest in not controversial.” Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter, has been an enigma to us. On the one-hand he is a Christian to be admired for his service to humanity. On the other hand he appears to be void of Libertarian principles of individualism, self-reliance and limited government.
What is clear to us, however, is that Jimmy Carter stands head and shoulders above all others who have worked to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, in terms of his hands-on experience, involvement and knowledge of the nature and extent of the issues and his personal knowledge of the roles and relationships of the long line of parties to the conflict. None can effectively challenge his wisdom, sincerity, integrity or credibility when it comes to his efforts on behalf of all the people of the Middle East.
These are some of the reasons why his report, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” must be taken seriously.
A Most Egregious Constitutional Tort
What if the fundamental Rights, Liberties and Freedoms of Americans were being curtailed because the United States was becoming a police State? What if the United States was becoming a Police State because it was engaged in a War on Terror?
What if the War on Terror was a result of hostilities directed towards the United States because the United States was annually giving billions of dollars of its tax revenues to the Government of Israel, who was using that money to pay its military to seize and occupy territories belonging to Palestinians -- a people of a different ethnicity and religion -- and to support the tyranny of Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing against the Palestinians?
What if tax revenues collected from the People of the United States were being used by Israel as follows:
treating the Palestinians worse than cattle, detaining them at will for long periods at hundreds of check points (denying emergency medical care to those who need it and causing produce to rot on farmers’ trucks, etc.);
arresting, torturing and assassinating thousands without due process; destroying homes, orchards and business places to make room for new Israeli settlements and highways that are off limits to the Palestinians;
keeping Palestinian cities under intermittent curfews, with some confinements lasting for weeks; depriving the Palestinians of their basic natural rights to assemble, speak freely, travel freely, and to fair and public trials in civilian rather than military tribunals; imposing indefinite sentences; preventing free trade of produce and manufactured goods originating in the occupied territories; curtailing the supply of water and foodstuffs into the occupied territories if for the benefit of the Palestinians, resulting in widespread hunger and malnutrition;
discharging untreated sewage from the new hilltop Israeli settlements into the surrounding fields and villages; closing Palestinian schools and universities; arresting educators; closing bookstores, censoring libraries;
encouraging unemployment; intercepting aid meant for the Palestinians and using it for the benefit of Israel, including the razing of more homes and the construction of more settlements and limited access highways?
What if all this was aimed at forcing the Palestinians to leave their ancestral home?
What if tax revenues collected from the People of the United States were now being used by Israel to build a wall to imprison Palestinians who have not already fled, allowing them to leave for distant countries but never allowing them to return.
What if the millions of Palestinians who were forced to flee from their homes and farms to settle in refugee camps in neighboring countries, as well as others People of similar ethnicity – Arabians – living in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere knew that for 35 years the Congress of the United States had laid and collected taxes from the People of the United States to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society?
What if 9-11 would not have occurred if the United States had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy the Palestinian society?
What if the current War on Terrorism would not have been initiated if the United States had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy the Palestinian society?
What if the Rights, Freedoms and Liberties of the People of the United States were as they were before 9-11 if the United States had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy the Palestinian society?
What if the application of the armed forces of the United States against Iraq, Iran, Syria or any other country in the Middle East benefits Israel and no other country, including the United States?
What if the United States Government was as beloved by the People around the world as it was prior to 1967 because the United States had not provided support of Israeli violations of the United Nations Charter, international law, and the precepts of all major religious faiths?
The Constitutional Violation
Unless the facts presented by Jimmy Carter and the two Professors can be effectively denied, we, the People have a duty to do everything in our power to hold the Government accountable to the following clause of the Constitution, and thereby arrest and roll back America’s advance toward a Police State and its headlong rush into debt, dependency, and decay – i.e., a rush to the bottom.
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States ….”
Art. I, Section 8, Clause 1
GML 2007 Agenda and Speakers
Any conference on the state of the Constitution cannot ignore the reality of the potential link between our support of Israel’s destruction of the Palestine society and our developing Police State with its destruction of our Freedoms, Rights and Liberties.In brief, our nation’s Mid-East policy appears to have not only brought disastrous injury to the Peoples of the Middle East, but has wrecked havoc at home, resulting in institutionalized attacks upon our Constitution and the unalienable Rights of the People.Given the importance of these findings to the health of the Republic and continuation of Liberty, we have decided to devote the first half of the opening day of the conference to a discussion/debate on the issue.
To that end, we have extended invitations to certain experts to participate in the conference, either directly or by remote satellite hookup, for the express purpose of admitting or denying the facts presented in the Working Paper and in Carter’s Book.
We have extended invitations to the Government of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, AIPAC, the Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center, Al Jazeera and a number of noteworthy scholars and authors. Officials of the U.S. government have also been invited. Several speakers have accepted our invitation. Negotiations are continuing with others.
Following the conference session on U.S. Foreign Policy, credentialed and accomplished experts will discuss the constitutionality of America’s developing Police State, and its monetary, tax, immigration, firearms, and health care policies and programs. Click for the latest GML 2007 conference Agenda.The following is a list of the confirmed speakers. Click on their names for biographical sketches.
Laurence Kotlikoff U.S. Bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve System, Prof. Economics, Boston University
Tommy Cryer The Direct, Un-apportioned Tax on Labor Is Unconstitutional
Rebecca O’Dell Current Constitutional Crisis: The Loss of Our Republican Form of Gov’t
G. Edward Griffin The Quigley Formula: Conspiratorial View of History
Chuck Michaels No Greater Threat To The Republic: The Rise of a National Security State
Jay Stanley America’s Developing Police State
Roy Beck Illegal Immigration: No Vacancy Here: Bloom Where You Are Planted
Larry Pratt The Full Contours of the Meaning of the Second Amendment
Genie Jennings Women To Play A Vital Role In Reinvigorating The State Militias
Meria Heller America: Past, Present and Future
Joseph Banister IRS Special Agent Abused For Questioning IRS Authority to Enforce Income Tax
Peymon Mottahedeh The $300,000 Income Tax Challenge
Must-See LIVE Conference Pay-Per-View
We The People is also pleased to announce that it is now offering a LIVE, 3-day Internet webcast of the conference proceedings to everyone who cannot attend the conference in person.All conference events, including lunch speakers and the controversial session on the Middle-East policy are included in the Pay-Per-View. Streaming for the PPV supports both dial-up and broadband/cable Internet connections.The PPV package also includes a FREE video record of the conference on CD/DVD. Production of the record will commence immediately following the conference.
Please consider experiencing this most important WTP event LIVE, via the Internet. Even if you don’t watch a minute of the webcast, you will still have your hard-copy of the conference record that you can share with your friends, family and communities for years to come.Your PPV donation not only helps us cover the enormous costs involved in hosting and producing this event, but helps us bring our battle to save the Constitution to a wide-ranging audience.
The transmittal letter requests an official response to the Petitions for Redress or for the elected official to send their representative to meet with the People across from the White House at 3 PM on Friday, March 30th, where the People will be waiting in silent vigil for a response.
Mid-East Policy v. the U.S. Constitution: GML 2007 to Debate Divisive Question
Register for “Must-See” LIVE Conference Pay-Per-View Petitions Served on Government
We The People Foundation is pleased to announce the final Agenda and a list of confirmed speakers for our Give Me liberty 2007 conference. You will notice a significant departure in subject matter from what we had in mind when we first decided to sponsor GML 2007.
But for our review of two publications and a certain clause of the U.S. Constitution, we would have settled on a different agenda months ago.
The course and speed we were taking to GML 2007 were significantly altered, first when an 82-page Working Paper that was published last year by two university Professors came to our attention, and then, by a 264-page book (actually a detailed historical report) that was published last year by former President Jimmy Carter.
These two documents caused a great awaking on our part. We discovered one, if not the root cause of the steady growth of a police state in America and the resultant erosion of our individual Rights, Liberties and Freedoms. We were compelled to research the subject further. We found verification of the facts and our deductive reasoning that led to our controversial findings.
We instinctively felt the Constitution was being violated. We needed to identify the provision(s) of the U.S. Constitution that were at issue and could best be used by the People as a sword to address and solve the problem. We settled on the appropriate constitutional clause and then decided we had no choice but to add the matter to the GML 2007 agenda and begin a search for appropriate speakers.
The Two Professors
The Working Paper that caught our attention was published last March by Professor John Mearsheimer from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Professor Stephen Walt from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The Working Paper is titled, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”
A link to the Working Paper is provided at the end of this article. Everyone interested in determining a root cause of America’s War on Terrorism and developing Police State is encouraged to read the entire paper.
We all have our pre-conceived notions regarding Israel, the Palestinians, their Arab neighbors, 9-11 and the “War on Terrorism.” We certainly had ours. However, our minds are always open to facts, more than opinions. The facts presented in the Working Paper, coupled with the facts presented in Carter’s report have produced an Aristotelian concept, a paradigm shift in our thinking. We ask everyone to try to put their pre-conceived notions and prejudices aside and read the Working Paper and Carter’s Book with an open mind.
As the Professors say in the introduction to the Working Paper, “Some readers will find this analysis disturbing, but the facts recounted here are not in serious dispute among scholars. Indeed, our account relies heavily on the work of Israeli scholars and journalists, who deserve great credit for shedding light on these issues. We also rely on evidence provided by respected Israeli and international human rights organizations. Similarly, our claims about the Lobby’s impact rely on testimony from the Lobby’s own members, as well as testimony from politicians who have worked with them. Readers may reject our conclusion, of course, but the evidence on which they rest in not controversial.” Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter, has been an enigma to us. On the one-hand he is a Christian to be admired for his service to humanity. On the other hand he appears to be void of Libertarian principles of individualism, self-reliance and limited government.
What is clear to us, however, is that Jimmy Carter stands head and shoulders above all others who have worked to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, in terms of his hands-on experience, involvement and knowledge of the nature and extent of the issues and his personal knowledge of the roles and relationships of the long line of parties to the conflict. None can effectively challenge his wisdom, sincerity, integrity or credibility when it comes to his efforts on behalf of all the people of the Middle East.
These are some of the reasons why his report, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” must be taken seriously.
A Most Egregious Constitutional Tort
What if the fundamental Rights, Liberties and Freedoms of Americans were being curtailed because the United States was becoming a police State? What if the United States was becoming a Police State because it was engaged in a War on Terror?
What if the War on Terror was a result of hostilities directed towards the United States because the United States was annually giving billions of dollars of its tax revenues to the Government of Israel, who was using that money to pay its military to seize and occupy territories belonging to Palestinians -- a people of a different ethnicity and religion -- and to support the tyranny of Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing against the Palestinians?
What if tax revenues collected from the People of the United States were being used by Israel as follows:
treating the Palestinians worse than cattle, detaining them at will for long periods at hundreds of check points (denying emergency medical care to those who need it and causing produce to rot on farmers’ trucks, etc.);
arresting, torturing and assassinating thousands without due process; destroying homes, orchards and business places to make room for new Israeli settlements and highways that are off limits to the Palestinians;
keeping Palestinian cities under intermittent curfews, with some confinements lasting for weeks; depriving the Palestinians of their basic natural rights to assemble, speak freely, travel freely, and to fair and public trials in civilian rather than military tribunals; imposing indefinite sentences; preventing free trade of produce and manufactured goods originating in the occupied territories; curtailing the supply of water and foodstuffs into the occupied territories if for the benefit of the Palestinians, resulting in widespread hunger and malnutrition;
discharging untreated sewage from the new hilltop Israeli settlements into the surrounding fields and villages; closing Palestinian schools and universities; arresting educators; closing bookstores, censoring libraries;
encouraging unemployment; intercepting aid meant for the Palestinians and using it for the benefit of Israel, including the razing of more homes and the construction of more settlements and limited access highways?
What if all this was aimed at forcing the Palestinians to leave their ancestral home?
What if tax revenues collected from the People of the United States were now being used by Israel to build a wall to imprison Palestinians who have not already fled, allowing them to leave for distant countries but never allowing them to return.
What if the millions of Palestinians who were forced to flee from their homes and farms to settle in refugee camps in neighboring countries, as well as others People of similar ethnicity – Arabians – living in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere knew that for 35 years the Congress of the United States had laid and collected taxes from the People of the United States to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society?
What if 9-11 would not have occurred if the United States had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy the Palestinian society?
What if the current War on Terrorism would not have been initiated if the United States had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy the Palestinian society?
What if the Rights, Freedoms and Liberties of the People of the United States were as they were before 9-11 if the United States had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy the Palestinian society?
What if the application of the armed forces of the United States against Iraq, Iran, Syria or any other country in the Middle East benefits Israel and no other country, including the United States?
What if the United States Government was as beloved by the People around the world as it was prior to 1967 because the United States had not provided support of Israeli violations of the United Nations Charter, international law, and the precepts of all major religious faiths?
The Constitutional Violation
Unless the facts presented by Jimmy Carter and the two Professors can be effectively denied, we, the People have a duty to do everything in our power to hold the Government accountable to the following clause of the Constitution, and thereby arrest and roll back America’s advance toward a Police State and its headlong rush into debt, dependency, and decay – i.e., a rush to the bottom.
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States ….”
Art. I, Section 8, Clause 1
Unless the facts presented by Jimmy Carter and the two Professors can be effectively denied, it is arguable that U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East is repugnant to the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution and U.S. aid to Israel should be suspended, liberating all Americans from long years of bondage to Israel’s misdeeds.
GML 2007 Agenda and Speakers
Any conference on the state of the Constitution cannot ignore the reality of the potential link between our support of Israel’s destruction of the Palestine society and our developing Police State with its destruction of our Freedoms, Rights and Liberties.In brief, our nation’s Mid-East policy appears to have not only brought disastrous injury to the Peoples of the Middle East, but has wrecked havoc at home, resulting in institutionalized attacks upon our Constitution and the unalienable Rights of the People.Given the importance of these findings to the health of the Republic and continuation of Liberty, we have decided to devote the first half of the opening day of the conference to a discussion/debate on the issue.
Unless the facts are effectively denied, we, the People of the United States of America have a duty to perform – the defense of our Constitution and the defense of Humanity.
To that end, we have extended invitations to certain experts to participate in the conference, either directly or by remote satellite hookup, for the express purpose of admitting or denying the facts presented in the Working Paper and in Carter’s Book.
We have extended invitations to the Government of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, AIPAC, the Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center, Al Jazeera and a number of noteworthy scholars and authors. Officials of the U.S. government have also been invited. Several speakers have accepted our invitation. Negotiations are continuing with others.
More on this later.
Following the conference session on U.S. Foreign Policy, credentialed and accomplished experts will discuss the constitutionality of America’s developing Police State, and its monetary, tax, immigration, firearms, and health care policies and programs. Click for the latest GML 2007 conference Agenda.The following is a list of the confirmed speakers. Click on their names for biographical sketches.
Laurence Kotlikoff U.S. Bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve System, Prof. Economics, Boston University
Tommy Cryer The Direct, Un-apportioned Tax on Labor Is Unconstitutional
Rebecca O’Dell Current Constitutional Crisis: The Loss of Our Republican Form of Gov’t
G. Edward Griffin The Quigley Formula: Conspiratorial View of History
James Harper The National ID card
Chuck Michaels No Greater Threat To The Republic: The Rise of a National Security State
Jay Stanley America’s Developing Police State
Rashid Buttar Absence of Personal Choice In Health Care
Mark Lane The Right to Petition For Redress of Grievances, (counsel, landmark RTP lawsuit)
Frosty Wooldridge Illegal Immigration and the Coming Population Crisis for America
Roy Beck Illegal Immigration: No Vacancy Here: Bloom Where You Are Planted
Larry Pratt The Full Contours of the Meaning of the Second Amendment
Genie Jennings Women To Play A Vital Role In Reinvigorating The State Militias
Meria Heller America: Past, Present and Future
Joseph Banister IRS Special Agent Abused For Questioning IRS Authority to Enforce Income Tax
Steve Hempfling Impermissible Retaliation for Petitioning for Redress of Grievances
Peymon Mottahedeh The $300,000 Income Tax Challenge
Must-See LIVE Conference Pay-Per-View
We The People is also pleased to announce that it is now offering a LIVE, 3-day Internet webcast of the conference proceedings to everyone who cannot attend the conference in person.All conference events, including lunch speakers and the controversial session on the Middle-East policy are included in the Pay-Per-View. Streaming for the PPV supports both dial-up and broadband/cable Internet connections.The PPV package also includes a FREE video record of the conference on CD/DVD. Production of the record will commence immediately following the conference.
Please consider experiencing this most important WTP event LIVE, via the Internet. Even if you don’t watch a minute of the webcast, you will still have your hard-copy of the conference record that you can share with your friends, family and communities for years to come.Your PPV donation not only helps us cover the enormous costs involved in hosting and producing this event, but helps us bring our battle to save the Constitution to a wide-ranging audience.
You may want to consider hosting a conference viewing event in your local area so that numerous people can gather together and participate in the conference remotely. Although the PPV is itself copyrighted and cannot be recorded or retransmitted, WTP is encouraging group gatherings of WTP supporters to experience it at such events.The conference is being streamed by a professional streaming concern that services Fortune 50 companies including Disney.
Click here to register for the GML 2007 LIVE Pay-Per-View.Petitions for Redress Served Last week, the We The People Foundation formally served every Member of Congress and the President of the United States with seven Petitions for Redress of Grievances.The Petitions detailed substantive constitutional Grievances regarding the Iraq Resolution, the privately-owned Federal Reserve, the “USA PATRIOT Act”, the federal Income Tax, the North American Union, the infringement of the Second Amendment, and the failure of the President to enforce the Immigration Laws of the United States.435 Representatives, 100 Senators and the President were each served with a CD-ROM copy of the seven Petitions for Redress of Grievances, electronically signed by tens of thousands of American citizens. The package included a transmittal letter and a copy of the Right-to-Petition Educational CD. Click here to see the transmittal letter that was used to serve the President. A similar letter was sent to Congress members.
The transmittal letter requests an official response to the Petitions for Redress or for the elected official to send their representative to meet with the People across from the White House at 3 PM on Friday, March 30th, where the People will be waiting in silent vigil for a response.
Note: This document is 1.2 MB. Please RIGHT-click to download it onto your computerRead Schulz's letter to the President transmitting the Petition for Redress click here to register for the GML 2007 LIVE Pay-Per-View.Click for the latest GML 2007 conference Agenda.
15 March 2007
07 March 2007
The Coming Entitlement Meltdown
The Coming Entitlement Meltdown
By Ron Paul
March 5, 2007
David Walker, Comptroller General at the Government Accountability Office, appeared on the show “60 Minutes” last evening to discuss the federal budget outlook. If you saw the show, you know that he painted a very sobering picture regarding the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations.
If you didn’t see the show, Mr. Walker’s theme was simple: government entitlement spending is like a runaway freight train headed straight at American taxpayers. He singled out the Medicare prescription drug bill, passed by Congress at the end of 2003, as “probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.”
When it comes to Social Security and Medicare, the federal government simply won’t be able to keep its promises in the future. That is the reality every American should get used to, despite the grand promises of Washington reformers. Our entitlement system can’t be reformed- it’s too late. And the Medicare prescription drug bill is the final nail in the coffin.
The financial impact of the drug bill cannot be overstated. Government projections that the program would cost $400 billion over the next decade were a joke, as everyone in Congress knew even as they voted for the bill. The real cost will be at least $1 trillion in the first decade alone, and much more in following decades as the American population grows older.
The Medicare “trust fund” is already badly in the red, and the only solution will be a dramatic increase in payroll taxes for younger workers. The National Taxpayers Union reports that Medicare will consume nearly 40% of the nation’s GDP after several decades because of the new drug benefit. That’s not 40% of federal revenues, or 40% of federal spending, but rather 40 % of the nation’s entire private sector output! The politicians who get reelected by passing such incredibly shortsighted legislation will never have to answer to future generations saddled with huge federal deficits. Those generations are the real victims, as they cannot object to the debts being incurred today in their names.
The official national debt figure, now approaching $9 trillion, reflects only what the federal government owes in current debts on money already borrowed. It does not reflect what the federal government has promised to pay millions of Americans in entitlement benefits down the road. Those future obligations put our real debt figure at roughly fifty trillion dollars- a staggering sum that is about as large as the total household net worth of the entire United States. Your share of this fifty trillion amounts to about $175,000.
Don’t believe for a second that we can grow our way out of the problem through a prosperous economy that yields higher future tax revenues. If present trends continue, by 2040 the entire federal budget will be consumed by Social Security and Medicare alone. The only options for balancing the budget would be cutting total federal spending by about 60%, or doubling federal taxes. To close the long-term entitlement gap, the U.S. economy would have to grow by double digits every year for the next 75 years.
The answer to these critical financial realities is simple, but not easy: We must rethink the very role of government in our society. Anything less, any tinkering or “reform,” won’t cut it. A good start would be for Congress to repeal the Medicare prescription drug bill.
Viguerie's Controversial Speech at CPAC
Viguerie's Controversial Speech at CPAC
This week more than 6,000 conservative activists from around the nation are attending the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. This is the text of the speech delivered to them by Richard A. Viguerie, author of Conservatives Betrayed. His speech was repeatedly interrupted with enthusiastic applause, and he received a standing ovation at the end, suggesting that conservative discontent and even anger over President Bush and the Big Government Republicans in Congress is now widespread and deep.
Richard A. Viguerie
“Strategies for a Bold Conservative Future”
Conservative Political Action Conference
Regency Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
To have a successful future, it helps to understand the past.
First, let’s understand that conservatives and conservatism did not lose last November.
The election loss was a direct result of the Republican Party and its leadership in the White House and Congress moving left.
The Republicans became that which they beheld.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, they beheld the corruption and abuse of power by the Democrats. But a few years after the voters threw the Democrats out of office, the Republicans became that which they beheld-the Republicans became corrupt and abused their power.
When most of the Congressional Republicans first ran for office, they ran against the sewer that Washington had become. But after a few years in Washington most of them act like they’ve discovered that Washington isn’t a sewer after all – it’s a hot tub.
In other words, the Republicans’ real message was: “We didn’t want the Democrats spending the money, but now that we are totally in charge, let’s blow the door off the bank vault, and let’s spend and spend and spend our children and grandchildren’s inheritance.”
ALL FOR THE SOLE IMMORAL, CORRUPT PURPOSE OF HOLDING ONTO POWER.
And how appropriate that it turned into ashes in their mouth.
In January 2001, for all intents and purposes, the Republicans in the White House and Congress adopted a one-word strategy to govern.
And that one word was BRIBERY.
In essence they said to the voters ‘you’ve got votes-we’ve got money-let’s talk - let’s deal.’
The illegal corruption of Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, and Mark Foley is not a serious problem for us, our children, or grandchildren’s lives.
They’ve been caught and punished.
But far worse crimes have been committed by the politicians who are still sitting in their Capitol Hill offices. I’m talking about the legalized theft of trillions of dollars these politicians have stolen from the children of tomorrow – in order to buy votes to stay in office today.
Therefore conservatives, our #1 need going forward is for new leaders.
Conservatives are like the Biblical Jews who had to wander through the desert for 40 years until that generation of immoral corrupt leaders had passed away.
As conservatives, we’re not going to get to the political Promised Land until we also get new, uncorrupt, principled leaders.
Dr. Phil, the TV psychiatrist, likes to say: “How’s that working for you?”
And I say: How’s that working for you conservatives – to be an appendage of the Republican Party?
The voters spoke in November, and what was the first thing the Republicans did? They kept in power all the leaders who had led them over the cliff!
Obviously the initials GOP now stands for Go On Partying. Or Give up (G) on (O) principles (P).
Well, the Republican party apparently has a death wish, but that doesn’t mean we conservatives have to go along with it.
My strong recommendation is for conservatives to stop being an arm of the Republican Party and become a 3rd Force, but not a 3rd Party.
The left has had enormous success by building strong 3rd force groups and coalitions.
The left has hundreds of environmental groups, consumer groups, civil rights groups, feminist groups, and homosexual groups, etc., etc.
And these groups have their own agenda, their own members, their own money, and most importantly they operate independent of the Democratic Party
Conservatives must do the same.
No longer think of yourself as a Republican, but as a Reagan conservative.
Let’s re-launch the conservative movement.
Let’s act independently of the Republican Party and their failed big government leadership.
Let’s focus on the conservative movement, not the GOP.
We need to greatly increase the size and number of principled conservative organizations.
Let’s launch a thousand new organizations reaching out to:
1. Small business owners, especially women, Hispanics, and Asians.
2. America’s youth, who know the current Social Security system just won’t be there for them.
3. Independent voters, most of who support a balanced budget, family values, and fiscal restraint.
4. Values voters, who agree with us on same sex marriage and the culture of life and promoting traditional moral values – not Hollywood values.
5. Young married couples, who care about child tax credits and better schools.
6. Senior citizens, who want to stop the politicians’ raid on the Social Security Trust Fund – and don’t trust them to manage their health care, either.
7. Doctors, who are already being hamstrung by red tape – and are scared to death of the prospect of socialized medicine.
8. And all the Americans in the “sensible center” who know deep-down that conservatives really are “right:” We’re right on illegal immigration, right on taxes, right on health care, right on the economy, right on terrorism – and right for America.
Let’s withhold support from all Republican National Committees because they spend our money in primaries to defeat conservatives.
Let’s withhold support from most Republican elected officials, supporting only those few principled conservatives
Let’s challenge in primaries all establishment big government Republicans and Democrats at the National, state, and local levels.
Let’s run principled conservatives for local, state, and national party offices.
I congratulate CPAC for not having the Chairman of the Republican National Committee at CPAC for the first time in memory.
And conservatives—this is important – for the time being, we should withhold our support from all of the top tier 2008 Presidential wannabees.
Not a one of them deserves our support today.
They all fail the Goldwater/Reagan test.
Goldwater became our hero when he and he alone in Washington stood up and criticized the Republicans for their big government policies.
On the floor of the Senate in 1960, he said President Eisenhower was running a dime store New Deal.
He spoke truth to power. Where is the Republican Presidential candidate that has stood up publicly to the big government Republican leaders in the last 6 years?
And if they haven’t stood up for conservative principles in the last 6 years, they won’t start if they become President.
And Reagan regularly criticized Presidents Nixon and Ford.
And the second test is, tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.
Reagan walked with conservatives- long before he ran for President in 1976; he was at our meetings, our receptions, and our rallies.
And surrounding Reagan were conservative stars Lyn Nofziger, Marty Anderson, Dick Allen, Ed Meese, Judge Clark, Joe Coors, and many others.
If conservatives have not been around a Republican Presidential candidate before he began asking for our votes, I guarantee you conservatives will not be around him if he moves into the White House.
And I promise you; you will not have conservative policies or conservative programs without conservative personnel.
I don’t know about you, but I’m angry and I feel betrayed, but fortunately there are things we conservatives can do to become a governing majority in America.
However, it’s not likely to happen quickly, certainly not by 2008.
One of the strengths of the conservative movement is we’ve always approached politics as a marathon, not a sprint.
It may take 6-10 years for conservatives to be able to govern America.
But 1st conservatives have to follow the advice that Kevin Costner got in the baseball movie “Field of Dreams.”
If you build it, they will come.
We have to build a whole new conservative movement, independent of the two major parties.
And once we build a large, dynamic powerful conservative movement, the next Ronald Reagan will appear.
Remember the movie, “The Blues Brothers” with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.
The idea in the movie was
We’re putting the band back together
And we’re on a mission from God
Well conservatives,
We’re putting the conservative movement back together.
And hopefully we’re on a mission from God.
NOTE to EDITORS: Richard A. Viguerie pioneered ideological and political direct mail and has been called “the funding father of the conservative movement” for his role in helping build dozens of conservative organizations. He is the author of the newly released Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006).
Richard A. Viguerie
ConservativesBetrayed.com
Suite 400, 9625 Surveyor Court
Manassas, VA 20110
rav@conservativesbetrayed.com
www.ConservativesBetrayed.com
This week more than 6,000 conservative activists from around the nation are attending the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. This is the text of the speech delivered to them by Richard A. Viguerie, author of Conservatives Betrayed. His speech was repeatedly interrupted with enthusiastic applause, and he received a standing ovation at the end, suggesting that conservative discontent and even anger over President Bush and the Big Government Republicans in Congress is now widespread and deep.
Richard A. Viguerie
“Strategies for a Bold Conservative Future”
Conservative Political Action Conference
Regency Ballroom
Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
To have a successful future, it helps to understand the past.
First, let’s understand that conservatives and conservatism did not lose last November.
The election loss was a direct result of the Republican Party and its leadership in the White House and Congress moving left.
The Republicans became that which they beheld.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, they beheld the corruption and abuse of power by the Democrats. But a few years after the voters threw the Democrats out of office, the Republicans became that which they beheld-the Republicans became corrupt and abused their power.
When most of the Congressional Republicans first ran for office, they ran against the sewer that Washington had become. But after a few years in Washington most of them act like they’ve discovered that Washington isn’t a sewer after all – it’s a hot tub.
In other words, the Republicans’ real message was: “We didn’t want the Democrats spending the money, but now that we are totally in charge, let’s blow the door off the bank vault, and let’s spend and spend and spend our children and grandchildren’s inheritance.”
ALL FOR THE SOLE IMMORAL, CORRUPT PURPOSE OF HOLDING ONTO POWER.
And how appropriate that it turned into ashes in their mouth.
In January 2001, for all intents and purposes, the Republicans in the White House and Congress adopted a one-word strategy to govern.
And that one word was BRIBERY.
In essence they said to the voters ‘you’ve got votes-we’ve got money-let’s talk - let’s deal.’
The illegal corruption of Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, and Mark Foley is not a serious problem for us, our children, or grandchildren’s lives.
They’ve been caught and punished.
But far worse crimes have been committed by the politicians who are still sitting in their Capitol Hill offices. I’m talking about the legalized theft of trillions of dollars these politicians have stolen from the children of tomorrow – in order to buy votes to stay in office today.
Therefore conservatives, our #1 need going forward is for new leaders.
Conservatives are like the Biblical Jews who had to wander through the desert for 40 years until that generation of immoral corrupt leaders had passed away.
As conservatives, we’re not going to get to the political Promised Land until we also get new, uncorrupt, principled leaders.
Dr. Phil, the TV psychiatrist, likes to say: “How’s that working for you?”
And I say: How’s that working for you conservatives – to be an appendage of the Republican Party?
The voters spoke in November, and what was the first thing the Republicans did? They kept in power all the leaders who had led them over the cliff!
Obviously the initials GOP now stands for Go On Partying. Or Give up (G) on (O) principles (P).
Well, the Republican party apparently has a death wish, but that doesn’t mean we conservatives have to go along with it.
My strong recommendation is for conservatives to stop being an arm of the Republican Party and become a 3rd Force, but not a 3rd Party.
The left has had enormous success by building strong 3rd force groups and coalitions.
The left has hundreds of environmental groups, consumer groups, civil rights groups, feminist groups, and homosexual groups, etc., etc.
And these groups have their own agenda, their own members, their own money, and most importantly they operate independent of the Democratic Party
Conservatives must do the same.
No longer think of yourself as a Republican, but as a Reagan conservative.
Let’s re-launch the conservative movement.
Let’s act independently of the Republican Party and their failed big government leadership.
Let’s focus on the conservative movement, not the GOP.
We need to greatly increase the size and number of principled conservative organizations.
Let’s launch a thousand new organizations reaching out to:
1. Small business owners, especially women, Hispanics, and Asians.
2. America’s youth, who know the current Social Security system just won’t be there for them.
3. Independent voters, most of who support a balanced budget, family values, and fiscal restraint.
4. Values voters, who agree with us on same sex marriage and the culture of life and promoting traditional moral values – not Hollywood values.
5. Young married couples, who care about child tax credits and better schools.
6. Senior citizens, who want to stop the politicians’ raid on the Social Security Trust Fund – and don’t trust them to manage their health care, either.
7. Doctors, who are already being hamstrung by red tape – and are scared to death of the prospect of socialized medicine.
8. And all the Americans in the “sensible center” who know deep-down that conservatives really are “right:” We’re right on illegal immigration, right on taxes, right on health care, right on the economy, right on terrorism – and right for America.
Let’s withhold support from all Republican National Committees because they spend our money in primaries to defeat conservatives.
Let’s withhold support from most Republican elected officials, supporting only those few principled conservatives
Let’s challenge in primaries all establishment big government Republicans and Democrats at the National, state, and local levels.
Let’s run principled conservatives for local, state, and national party offices.
I congratulate CPAC for not having the Chairman of the Republican National Committee at CPAC for the first time in memory.
And conservatives—this is important – for the time being, we should withhold our support from all of the top tier 2008 Presidential wannabees.
Not a one of them deserves our support today.
They all fail the Goldwater/Reagan test.
Goldwater became our hero when he and he alone in Washington stood up and criticized the Republicans for their big government policies.
On the floor of the Senate in 1960, he said President Eisenhower was running a dime store New Deal.
He spoke truth to power. Where is the Republican Presidential candidate that has stood up publicly to the big government Republican leaders in the last 6 years?
And if they haven’t stood up for conservative principles in the last 6 years, they won’t start if they become President.
And Reagan regularly criticized Presidents Nixon and Ford.
And the second test is, tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.
Reagan walked with conservatives- long before he ran for President in 1976; he was at our meetings, our receptions, and our rallies.
And surrounding Reagan were conservative stars Lyn Nofziger, Marty Anderson, Dick Allen, Ed Meese, Judge Clark, Joe Coors, and many others.
If conservatives have not been around a Republican Presidential candidate before he began asking for our votes, I guarantee you conservatives will not be around him if he moves into the White House.
And I promise you; you will not have conservative policies or conservative programs without conservative personnel.
I don’t know about you, but I’m angry and I feel betrayed, but fortunately there are things we conservatives can do to become a governing majority in America.
However, it’s not likely to happen quickly, certainly not by 2008.
One of the strengths of the conservative movement is we’ve always approached politics as a marathon, not a sprint.
It may take 6-10 years for conservatives to be able to govern America.
But 1st conservatives have to follow the advice that Kevin Costner got in the baseball movie “Field of Dreams.”
If you build it, they will come.
We have to build a whole new conservative movement, independent of the two major parties.
And once we build a large, dynamic powerful conservative movement, the next Ronald Reagan will appear.
Remember the movie, “The Blues Brothers” with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.
The idea in the movie was
We’re putting the band back together
And we’re on a mission from God
Well conservatives,
We’re putting the conservative movement back together.
And hopefully we’re on a mission from God.
NOTE to EDITORS: Richard A. Viguerie pioneered ideological and political direct mail and has been called “the funding father of the conservative movement” for his role in helping build dozens of conservative organizations. He is the author of the newly released Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006).
Richard A. Viguerie
ConservativesBetrayed.com
Suite 400, 9625 Surveyor Court
Manassas, VA 20110
rav@conservativesbetrayed.com
www.ConservativesBetrayed.com
04 March 2007
Claim: Law professor demonstrates that the results of the 2000 presidential election correspond to an 18th century historian's prediction of conditions accompanying the downfall of democracy.
Status: Multiple — see below.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2003]
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:
"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."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:
Population of counties won by:
Gore = 127 million
Bush = 143 million
Square miles of land won by:
Gore = 580,000
Bush = 2,2427,000
States won by:
Gore = 19
Bush = 29
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 tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare . . ."
Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and "complacency" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
Origins: The piece quoted above has been circulating on the Internet since shortly after the November 2000 presidential election. We haven't examined it ourselves yet, but Mike Powell of Kennewick, Washington, was kind enough to send us his analysis, which we're happy to include here.
1. The population of the counties and square miles of area won by each Bush and Gore appear to be accurate. They are consistent with the election-result map published by USA Today on 20 November 2000.
2. The number of states won by each candidate is wrong, but the numbers given (29 and 19) imply this piece was written before the results of the Florida and New Mexico vote-counts were determined. The final tallies were 30 states for Bush and 20 for Gore.
3. The quote from "Alexander Tyler" is very likely fictitious. His name was actually "Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler," and he was a Scottish historian/professor who wrote several books in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
However, there is no record of The Fall of the Athenian Republic or The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic in the Library of Congress, which has several other titles by Tytler. This quote has also been cited as being from Tytler's Universal History or from his Elements of General History, Ancient and Modern, books that do exist. These books seem the most likely source of the quote, as they contain extensive discussions of the political systems in historic civilizations, including Athens. Universal History was published after, and based upon, Elements of General History, which was a collection of Professor Tytler's lecture notes.
Tytler's book, Universal history, from the creation of the world to the beginning of the eighteenth century, is available for viewing and searching on-line. The complete text was searched for each of the following phrases:
Athenian Republic
democracy
generous gifts
public treasury
loose fiscal
fiscal
bondage
200 years
two hundred years
spiritual faith
In no case was text identified that was remotely similar in words or intent to the alleged Tytler quote.
4. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University is not the source of any of the statistics or the text attributed to him. Professor Olson was contacted (by me) via e-mail, and he confirmed that he had no authorship or involvement in this matter. And, as Fayette Citizen editor Dave Hamrick wrote back in January 2001:
I really enjoyed one recent message that was circulated extremely widely, at least among conservatives. It gave several interesting "facts" supposedly compiled by statisticians and political scientists about the counties across the nation that voted for George Bush and the ones that voted for Al Gore in the recent election.
Supposedly, the people in the counties for Bush had more education, more income, ad infinitum, than the counties for Gore.
I didn't have time to check them all out, but I was curious about one item in particular... the contention that the murder rate in the Gore counties was about a billion times higher than in the Bush counties.
This was attributed to a Professor Joseph Olson at the Hamline University School of Law. I never heard of such a university, but went online and found it. And Prof. Olson does exist.
"Now I'm getting somewhere," I thought.
But in response to my e-mail, Olson said the "research" was attributed to him erroneously. He said it came from a Sheriff Jay Printz in Montana. I e-mailed Sheriff Printz, and guess what? He didn't do the research either, and didn't remember who had e-mailed it to him.
In other words, he got the same legend e-mailed to him and passed it on to Olson without checking it out, and when Olson passed it on, someone thought it sounded better if a law professor had done the research, and so it grew.
Who knows where it originally came from, but it's just not true.
5. The county-by-county murder-rate comparison presented in this piece is wrong.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), in the year 2000 the national murder rate was about 5.5 per 100,000 residents. Homicide data by county for 1999 and 2000 can be downloaded from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NAJCD), and the counties won by Gore and Bush can be identified using the county-by-county election results made available by CNN. (The NACJD provides not only the number of reported murders for each county, but also the population for each.) The average murder rate in the counties won by Gore vs. the rate in the counties won by Bush can be determined from this data.
By calculating the murder rate for each county and then taking the averages, we find a murder rate (defined as number of murders per 100,000 residents) of about 5.2 for the "average" Gore county and 3.3 for the average Bush county. But since people, rather than counties, commit murders, a more appropriate approach is to calculate the total number of murders in the counties won by each candidate and divide that figure by the total number of residents in those counties. This more appropriate method yields the following average murder rates in counties won by each candidate:
Gore: 6.5
Bush: 4.1
There is a distinct difference between these two numbers, but it is nowhere near as large as the quoted e-mail message states (i.e., 13.2 for Gore vs. 2.1 for Bush). Note that the average of these two figures is 5.3, which, as expected, is very close to the reported national murder rate of 5.5.
Last updated: 28 January 2004
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp
Click here to e-mail this page to a friend
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson. This material may not be reproduced without permission
From: Charlesj2003@...
To: ...
Subject: Interesting
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007
Subject: Scary stuff
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 Hamline University School of Law, St.
Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the
2000 Presidential election:
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29
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 goodbye to the USA in
fewer than five years.
Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake,
knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
Charlie
Status: Multiple — see below.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2003]
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:
"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."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:
Population of counties won by:
Gore = 127 million
Bush = 143 million
Square miles of land won by:
Gore = 580,000
Bush = 2,2427,000
States won by:
Gore = 19
Bush = 29
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 tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare . . ."
Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and "complacency" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
Origins: The piece quoted above has been circulating on the Internet since shortly after the November 2000 presidential election. We haven't examined it ourselves yet, but Mike Powell of Kennewick, Washington, was kind enough to send us his analysis, which we're happy to include here.
1. The population of the counties and square miles of area won by each Bush and Gore appear to be accurate. They are consistent with the election-result map published by USA Today on 20 November 2000.
2. The number of states won by each candidate is wrong, but the numbers given (29 and 19) imply this piece was written before the results of the Florida and New Mexico vote-counts were determined. The final tallies were 30 states for Bush and 20 for Gore.
3. The quote from "Alexander Tyler" is very likely fictitious. His name was actually "Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler," and he was a Scottish historian/professor who wrote several books in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
However, there is no record of The Fall of the Athenian Republic or The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic in the Library of Congress, which has several other titles by Tytler. This quote has also been cited as being from Tytler's Universal History or from his Elements of General History, Ancient and Modern, books that do exist. These books seem the most likely source of the quote, as they contain extensive discussions of the political systems in historic civilizations, including Athens. Universal History was published after, and based upon, Elements of General History, which was a collection of Professor Tytler's lecture notes.
Tytler's book, Universal history, from the creation of the world to the beginning of the eighteenth century, is available for viewing and searching on-line. The complete text was searched for each of the following phrases:
Athenian Republic
democracy
generous gifts
public treasury
loose fiscal
fiscal
bondage
200 years
two hundred years
spiritual faith
In no case was text identified that was remotely similar in words or intent to the alleged Tytler quote.
4. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University is not the source of any of the statistics or the text attributed to him. Professor Olson was contacted (by me) via e-mail, and he confirmed that he had no authorship or involvement in this matter. And, as Fayette Citizen editor Dave Hamrick wrote back in January 2001:
I really enjoyed one recent message that was circulated extremely widely, at least among conservatives. It gave several interesting "facts" supposedly compiled by statisticians and political scientists about the counties across the nation that voted for George Bush and the ones that voted for Al Gore in the recent election.
Supposedly, the people in the counties for Bush had more education, more income, ad infinitum, than the counties for Gore.
I didn't have time to check them all out, but I was curious about one item in particular... the contention that the murder rate in the Gore counties was about a billion times higher than in the Bush counties.
This was attributed to a Professor Joseph Olson at the Hamline University School of Law. I never heard of such a university, but went online and found it. And Prof. Olson does exist.
"Now I'm getting somewhere," I thought.
But in response to my e-mail, Olson said the "research" was attributed to him erroneously. He said it came from a Sheriff Jay Printz in Montana. I e-mailed Sheriff Printz, and guess what? He didn't do the research either, and didn't remember who had e-mailed it to him.
In other words, he got the same legend e-mailed to him and passed it on to Olson without checking it out, and when Olson passed it on, someone thought it sounded better if a law professor had done the research, and so it grew.
Who knows where it originally came from, but it's just not true.
5. The county-by-county murder-rate comparison presented in this piece is wrong.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), in the year 2000 the national murder rate was about 5.5 per 100,000 residents. Homicide data by county for 1999 and 2000 can be downloaded from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NAJCD), and the counties won by Gore and Bush can be identified using the county-by-county election results made available by CNN. (The NACJD provides not only the number of reported murders for each county, but also the population for each.) The average murder rate in the counties won by Gore vs. the rate in the counties won by Bush can be determined from this data.
By calculating the murder rate for each county and then taking the averages, we find a murder rate (defined as number of murders per 100,000 residents) of about 5.2 for the "average" Gore county and 3.3 for the average Bush county. But since people, rather than counties, commit murders, a more appropriate approach is to calculate the total number of murders in the counties won by each candidate and divide that figure by the total number of residents in those counties. This more appropriate method yields the following average murder rates in counties won by each candidate:
Gore: 6.5
Bush: 4.1
There is a distinct difference between these two numbers, but it is nowhere near as large as the quoted e-mail message states (i.e., 13.2 for Gore vs. 2.1 for Bush). Note that the average of these two figures is 5.3, which, as expected, is very close to the reported national murder rate of 5.5.
Last updated: 28 January 2004
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp
Click here to e-mail this page to a friend
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson. This material may not be reproduced without permission
From: Charlesj2003@...
To: ...
Subject: Interesting
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007
Subject: Scary stuff
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 Hamline University School of Law, St.
Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the
2000 Presidential election:
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29
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 goodbye to the USA in
fewer than five years.
Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake,
knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.
Charlie
Somewhere Between the Complacency and Apathy...
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:
"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."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:
Population of counties won by:
Gore = 127 million
Bush = 143 million
Square miles of land won by:
Gore = 580,000
Bush = 2,2427,000
States won by:
Gore = 19
Bush = 29
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 tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare . . ."
Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and "complacency" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
"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."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:
Population of counties won by:
Gore = 127 million
Bush = 143 million
Square miles of land won by:
Gore = 580,000
Bush = 2,2427,000
States won by:
Gore = 19
Bush = 29
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 tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare . . ."
Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "apathy" and "complacency" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
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