So who is he?
Jim Mewborne, author of the following letter in the Gainesville Times. (link)
US government spirals into total socialism
I strongly agree with the letter writer regarding government handouts (Saturday's Community Forum). While he referred to Alexander Tyler and democracy, it should also be noted that Tyler said democracies progress through the following sequences:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From the great courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to selfishness;
6. From selfishness to complacency;
7. From complacency to apathy;
8. From apathy to dependence;
9. From dependence back again to bondage.
If you study the history of our government, you will see that we are now at sequence 7 and bordering rather closely to sequence 8. Our government was originally capitalistic, but it has become more and more socialist and, to my way of thinking, is headed toward total socialism.
While I don't consider myself a pessimist, I am truly concerned over the direction of our government and what the future holds not only for us to more importantly, for our descendants.
Jim Mewborne
Gainesville
This is one of those falsehoods that has become an Urban Legend.
Several people have debunked it, including the Library of Congress.
Here are two links to check.
Gary North
Snopes
The "Tyler" quote is very likely entirely fictitious. There was a Scottish historian/professor who wrote several books in the late 1700s and early 1800s. But, his last name was Tytler. His whole name was Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler.
I wish people would fact check before writing a letter to the Editor.
Mike Parker
1 comments:
The quote has a long history.
The first documented attribution to a "Tydler" was by Ronald Reagan in 1964.
On March 5, 1964, a taped speech of Ronald Reagan was played for the crowd at a Barry Goldwater rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. The quote was printed on the first page of the next day's Manchester Union Leader, under the article title "Roar Approval of Barry." The article states that Reagan attributed the quote to "Fraser Tydler." Reagan used the quote again on June 8, 1965, at a testimonial dinner for Rep. John M. Ashbrook in Granville, Ohio:
"Perhaps what he had in mind was what Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler has written, that a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority, he said, always vote for the candidate promising the most benefits from the treasury with the result that democracy always collpases over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship. Unfortunately, we can't argue with the professor because when he wrote that we were still colonials of Great Britain and he was explaining what had destroyed the Athenian Republic more than 2000 years before."
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