Professor Joseph Olson of 'Hemline' University
There is a Professor Joseph Olson at the Hamline University School of Law (misspelled "Hemline" in most versions of the email), but he had nothing whatsoever to do with the writing of the text or any of its contents. "It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship," he writes on his Hamline faculty page. "I have been trying to kill it since December 2000." (Obviously without success.)
"In aggregate," the email misquotes Olson as saying, "the map of the territory Bush won was (mostly) the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare...."
Not only is that patently false, not only did Olson not say it, but it smacks of partisan smear-mongering to boot. It's an intentional slap in the face to the roughly half of all U.S. citizens who voted Democratic in the 2000 election, and who are painted in this email as murderous, tenement-dwelling welfare leeches.
Small wonder the true author did not see fit to sign his or her own name.
The Fall of the Athenian Republic
Some versions of the email quote a passage attributed to Scottish history professor "Alexander Tyler" asserting that great civilizations always progress through a series of stages beginning with bondage, peaking in a state of liberty and abundance, then devolving through complacency and apathy back to to bondage again. Democracies fail when voters learn they can "vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury." This was supposedly the fate of the Athenian Republic, and, by implication, will be America's.
For the record, the professor's name was actually Alexander Tytler, and though he was indeed an accomplished 18th-century author, historian, and lawyer of 19th-century Scotland, his authorship of the passage, which doesn't seem to have appeared anywhere in print prior to the 20th century, is in doubt.
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Sources and further reading:
Don't Believe, or Pass On, All You Read
The Citizen, 17 January 2001Internet Legend Haunts Hamline Professor
Associated Press, 8 May 20062000 Election Results County-by-County
USA Today, 20 November 20002008 Election Results County-by-County
Outside the Beltway, 5 November 2008The Fall of the Athenian Republic
Urban Legends Reference Pages, 30 December 2008The Truth About Tytler
by Loren Collins
Last updated: 12/01/11
