Politics Can Blind People As Well

I've written a couple stories about how religion can blind folks. Well, politics sure can too! A true die-hard Republican or Democrat might feel so red or blue to the core, that they just can't stand to hear the other side so much as speak. Anything their party says, well, it's got to be true, right? Anything the other party says? Oh, that's complete nonsense! Sometimes it gets ridiculous.

Since the gist of this will be based on die-hard Republicans, I'll give an example of a die-hard Democrat right here, to try and even things out just a bit. Because, hey, this can happen on either side. If a Democrat were president and he/she said that there was life on Neptune, the die-hards may scream in unison, "Yeah, yeah, that's totally right! I always thought so!" They may say this, even though, they honestly never thought it was possible. But, if a Republican candidate speaks about there not being any signs of life outside this planet yet, even before he/she states those words, those die-hard Democrats will already start yelling, "You're full of it! You suck! Go home! Go to Neptune where you belong!" It's a beautiful thing how politics can blind many. I just received an e-mail that illustrates this. I will copy and paste every word of it, so you all may not be cheated out of the pleasure I had in reading this and then discovering, as I so suspected, that it's inaccurate. Keep in mind, this was sent by a relative of mine, who is red to the core, a die-hard Republican. Here is the e-mail:

"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 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 world's 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=2,242,700

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 mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare...'

Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the 'complacency' and 'apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.

Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake and that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom."

There you have it. Anything stand out as BS to you? Some people will go to any numbers or any source (no matter how fake or pretend that source is), so long as it backs up their party. Well, I looked further into this and first off, the states won by each candidate is wrong. Bush won 30 states and Gore won 20 (along with Washington D.C.).

The quote by "Alexander Tyler" is nonsense. His name was actually "Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler." There is also no record of "The Fall of the Athenian Republic."

Professor Joseph Olson is not the source of the statistics noted. He has confirmed this on several occasions. Listen to this. This is what Dave Hamrick, editor of Fayette Citizen, had to say concerning this e-mail:

"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."

Isn't that funny? So, what are the murder rates? According to the U.S. Department of Justice, nationally, it was 5.5 per 100,000. The actual rate, as opposed to what that e-mail wanted to suggest, is this, per 100,000:

Gore: 6.5
Bush: 4.1

Quite the difference, I must say. Going from a gap of 11.1 to a gap of 2.4, a difference of 8.7. So, if any of you receive this e-mail or hear others talking about it, feel free to chuckle or to speak up and send them to the link I will list directly below. I sent this link to the person who e-mailed me that nonsense letter. I'm interested to hear his response, if there is one.

Link:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

Update:

I just received an e-mail from my relative after I sent him the news that the letter was BS. Here's what he had to say:

"Oops! Sounded too good to be true." Yeah, didn't it? Only for the 34% who are still followers of Bush. They've got to be getting lonely now, just as I was when I was part of the 10% who didn't approve of him directly following 9/11. It can get pretty lonely down there, so one may be more apt to taking any kind of support they can find, even if it comes from a bogus source.