Urban Legend, Alexander Tyler

I am ashamed to be American whenever I see people inventing issues, quotations, or just lying for political reasons.

This is the usual form of the urban legend:

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 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:

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 "

Here's my letter to the Times, published in May.

Urban legend turns up in recent letter

I have been waiting for a credible source concerning the allegations by several Republicans that 30 to 40 million middle-class Americans are getting a $2,000 tax break from George Bush. While I'm waiting for that credible source, I might as well debunk Alexander Tyler.

No "Alexander Tyler" ever existed to pen the quotations often repeated over and over again by Republicans. The "Alexander Tyler" quotation was used by Jim Mewborne in a letter to the Editor of the Gainesville Times on Wednesday.

Remarkably, Ronald Reagan may have been the first to quote the mythical "Alexander Tyler" in a recorded speech in 1964. Then, on June 8, 1965, Reagan again used a version of that quote in a speech. But, it is uncertain if the 1964 speech cited "Tyler" or Tydler, his 1965 speech quoted a Tytler.

Tytler did exist and was the author of several books and a professor of history. However, the quote does not appear in any of his published works.

Further, the quote has been attributed in several forms to various people. Those people include Benjamin Disraeli, Alexis de Tocqueville, R. G. LeTourneau, Robert Muntzel and Arnold Toynbee.

Because the quotation is in several forms and attributed to so many people suggests very strongly a fraud. Certainly someone penned the words. But what reason is there for putting those words in the wrong mouths?

I suspect that someone with a political agenda manufactured the quote. The quote then was given a powerful author. The name of a powerful author gave the quote a false amount of credibility.

Tyler is an urban legend, a falsehood. Just like the "middle-class tax break" of $2,000 for a family of four from George Bush.

Michael Parker
Flowery Branch

How shameless are Republicans to invent a hateful quote, create a false identity for the author, and a bibliography? All that just to smear our country, our government, and our way of life.