[Grovenet] The Former USA???

Sun Apr 1 14:49:00 PDT 2007

It is absolutely a subject worthy of discussion Auma Marie, but with this
caveat from a researcher published on www.snopes.com: 

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.

-------------------------------

I think that rather than attribute our difficulties to any grand scheme for
the birth and death of nations, we look at human nature at expressed in most
of us. 

People who are optimistic and healthy but not too comfortable or complacent
get things done. That's what has propelled Asia out of poverty and put then
in a position of world leadership in education, science, medicine,
mathematics and perhaps even social development. 

Before them it was the people of Europe struggling up from the rubble of
WWII. Sure, they got a lot of help those first years from us, but they did
not live comfortably under that help. Rationing more severe than we
experienced at the height of the war continued on for over a decade in
Europe. 

We Americans are simply too fat: figuratively and literally. If our country
continues to decline into bankruptcy it won't be because of any external
plague or threat, but from internal "rot" based on a belief that we're
really working hard if hold onto a job and that we 'deserve' our toys and
comfortable life. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of AumaMarie at aol.com
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 12:44 PM
To: grovenet at lists.grovenet.org
Subject: [Grovenet] The Former USA???

Another topic for  discussion.  

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: 
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 illegal's and  they vote, then we can say 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. 
Thanks for  reading

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