Comments on: Our nation is falling apart. http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/ Deities. Dogma. Dating. Diapers. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:22:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.2 by: My fact-checking is falling apart. at Oh, for the love of God… http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2270 Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:52:47 +0000 http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2270 [...] I recently wrote a post, Our nation is falling apart. As commenter Stevo has pointed out, there’s very little factual truth in the email I received as a forward (what, am I supposed to be surprised, or something?) and grumbled about in this space. [...] […] I recently wrote a post, Our nation is falling apart. As commenter Stevo has pointed out, there’s very little factual truth in the email I received as a forward (what, am I supposed to be surprised, or something?) and grumbled about in this space. […]

]]> by: stevo http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2268 Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:43:56 +0000 http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2268 this entire post is bogus. it's a mass email being spread that is all made up. i went to the professor's website. he's livid about the fake email being spread about him. hes never published anything of the sort. http://www.hamline.edu/law/professors/joseph_olson.html as for the rest of the bogus email, go to http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp. this entire post is bogus. it’s a mass email being spread that is all made up. i went to the professor’s website. he’s livid about the fake email being spread about him. hes never published anything of the sort. http://www.hamline.edu/law/professors/joseph_olson.html

as for the rest of the bogus email, go to http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp.

]]> by: Kate http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2184 Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:42:44 +0000 http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2184 Big thumbs up to the first part - my dad is a big hustory junkie & had been saying that we are headed this way for a long time. The second part I need to chew on some more...not sure how I feel about the implications. Big thumbs up to the first part - my dad is a big hustory junkie & had been saying that we are headed this way for a long time. The second part I need to chew on some more…not sure how I feel about the implications.

]]> by: Fred http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2178 Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:46:33 +0000 http://ftlog.meanderwithme.com/2006/09/our-nation-is-falling-apart/#comment-2178 Oh goodness, so many things to rant about. Let me just leave alone the whole Gore-voters-are-murdering-welfare-hording-tenament-dwellers thing alone lest I be writing all night. I don't think our nation is falling apart. We're going through what feels like rough times, but our problems are solvable. Certainly it's nothing like the Great Depression, WW2, or even the Vietnam era. In my own lifetime, growing up in Pittsburgh, I lived through the collapse of the steel industry in the '80s, which caused devastation across the Rust Belt, from Cleveland to Buffalo. While Islamic terrorists are the nation's designated boogeymen nowadays, in the '80s, it was the Japanese, who were predicted to overwhelm the US economy. Read Michael Crichton's <i>Rising Sun</i> for a glimpse at the paranoia about the Japanese during that era. Anyway, I don't see that our times are any worse than many other times of difficulty in US history. As for the email, I noticed that the Scottish historian goes from mentioning Athenian democracy to saying that the average age of "great civilizations" in history has been 200 years. Who knows where he got that number? (wasn't the Egyptian civilization dominant for at least 1000 years? The British? The French? both of those civilizations are well over 500 years old and were dominant colonial powers at least until WW1) But not even considering those other civilizations, Athenian democracy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Athens" rel="nofollow">survived for 500 years</a> (according to Wikipedia, taken with the requisite grain of salt). The Roman Republic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_republic" rel="nofollow">lasted from 494 B.C. until the dictatorship of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.</a> (Wikipedia once again). Finally, the proposed sequence of events for the downfall of democracy is so ambiguous that any of the steps in the sequence could be applied to just about any time in US history. Were we complacent between 1820-1850, when the problem of slavery festered and we just hoped it could be swept under the rug? How about the time between the World Wars, when the League of Nations collapsed and Naziism took hold in Germany, but most Americans were unconcerned with the problems of Europe? Or in the '50s, when everyone just wanted a family, a big house and a big gas-guzzling car? Or maybe the '50s were a time of abundance?... Were the '90s a time of apathy? Certainly "apathy" doesn't seem like a good word to describe our terror-ridden politically-polarized times. Does that mean we're in a time of dependence now? It's just all very nonsensical to me. Oh goodness, so many things to rant about. Let me just leave alone the whole Gore-voters-are-murdering-welfare-hording-tenament-dwellers thing alone lest I be writing all night. I don’t think our nation is falling apart. We’re going through what feels like rough times, but our problems are solvable. Certainly it’s nothing like the Great Depression, WW2, or even the Vietnam era. In my own lifetime, growing up in Pittsburgh, I lived through the collapse of the steel industry in the ’80s, which caused devastation across the Rust Belt, from Cleveland to Buffalo. While Islamic terrorists are the nation’s designated boogeymen nowadays, in the ’80s, it was the Japanese, who were predicted to overwhelm the US economy. Read Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun for a glimpse at the paranoia about the Japanese during that era. Anyway, I don’t see that our times are any worse than many other times of difficulty in US history. As for the email, I noticed that the Scottish historian goes from mentioning Athenian democracy to saying that the average age of “great civilizations” in history has been 200 years. Who knows where he got that number? (wasn’t the Egyptian civilization dominant for at least 1000 years? The British? The French? both of those civilizations are well over 500 years old and were dominant colonial powers at least until WW1) But not even considering those other civilizations, Athenian democracy survived for 500 years (according to Wikipedia, taken with the requisite grain of salt). The Roman Republic lasted from 494 B.C. until the dictatorship of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. (Wikipedia once again). Finally, the proposed sequence of events for the downfall of democracy is so ambiguous that any of the steps in the sequence could be applied to just about any time in US history. Were we complacent between 1820-1850, when the problem of slavery festered and we just hoped it could be swept under the rug? How about the time between the World Wars, when the League of Nations collapsed and Naziism took hold in Germany, but most Americans were unconcerned with the problems of Europe? Or in the ’50s, when everyone just wanted a family, a big house and a big gas-guzzling car? Or maybe the ’50s were a time of abundance?… Were the ’90s a time of apathy? Certainly “apathy” doesn’t seem like a good word to describe our terror-ridden politically-polarized times. Does that mean we’re in a time of dependence now? It’s just all very nonsensical to me.

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