Coffee and Cigarattes

[bucfan64 309]

Taken from the following blog/podcast........

 

http://candcshow.com/unrepentant-america-060-coffee-cigarettes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+candcshow+%28Coffee+%26+Cigarettes%29

 

Everyone has a different idea about how to get this country on track but most people do agree it is off track. Something needs to be done. One guy is talking about the tax rate, another is talking about regulations on businesses, another is talking about media bias, another is talking about the need for a new president, and so on and so on. The problem is there aren’t too many people actually addressing the problem. We are pointing out all of the different layers of the problem–some of the by-products of the underlying problem–but not too many are really hitting on the core problem.

 

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian who lived in the 19th Century, is commonly quoted as saying, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.†I have never been able to find where or when he said that but the quote provides a pretty good summary of what de Tocqueville discovered during his first-hand study of the United States.

[vthokies4life 10]

 

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian who lived in the 19th Century, is commonly quoted as saying, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.†I have never been able to find where or when he said that but the quote provides a pretty good summary of what de Tocqueville discovered during his first-hand study of the United States.

Yeah... It's a nice sentiment but Tocqueville never said it. A quick google search came up with this article from The Weekly Standard: http://www.tocqueville.org/pitney.htm

 

 

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is a beloved, canonical text; the urge to quote from it is understandably great. Politicians ever seek to demonstrate familiarity with it, from Bill Clinton to Pat Buchanan. One of their favorite quotes runs as follows:

 

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers - and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerc - and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution - and it vas not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

These lines are uplifting and poetic. They are also spurious. Nowhere do they appear in Democracy in America, or anywhere else in Tocqueville.

The authenticity of the passage came into question when first-year government students at Claremont McKenna College received an assignment: Find a contemporary speech quoting Tocqueville, and determine how accurately the speaker used the quotation. A student soon uncovered a recent Senate floor speech that cited the "America is great" line. He scoured Democracy in America, but could not find the passage. The professor looked, too - and it was not there.

 

Further research led to reference books that cautiously referred to the quotation as "unverified" and "attributed to de Tocqueville but not found in his works." These references, in turn, pointed to the apparent source: a 1941 book on religion and the American dream. The book quoted the last two lines of the passage as coming from Democracy in America but supplied no documentation. (The author may have mistaken his own notes for a verbatim quotation, a common problem in the days before photocopiers.) The full version of the quotation appeared 11 years later, in an Eisenhower campaign speech. Ike, however, attributed it not directly to Tocqueville but to "a wise philosopher [who] came to this country ...."

 

One may conjecture that Eisenhower's speechwriter embellished the lines from the 1941 book and avoided a direct reference to Tocqueville as a way of covering himself. Speechwriters do such things from time to time. In his wonderful primer on politics, Playing to Win, Jeff Greenfield presented a model stump speech complete with a fake quotation from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. "If you are worried about being found out," Greenfield wrote, "change 'Heraclitus' to 'The Poet.'" (See page 117 of Greenfield, if you'd like to check.)

 

Whatever its origin, the passage found its way into circulation. President Reagan used it in a 1982 speech, though his speechwriter hedged by attributing it to Eisenhower's quotation of Tocqueville. Two years later, Reagan declared that Tocqueville "is said to have observed that 'America is great because America is good.'" Thereafter, his speechwriters grew less careful, and several subsequent Reagan addresses quoted from the passage without any qualifications. At this point, it started showing up with greater frequency in political rhetoric.

 

In 1987, Rep. William Dannemeyer quoted the passage's final line, adding that "America ceased to be good in 1971, when America's promise to pay ceased to be good." He was referring to President Nixon's decision to close the gold window. Apparently, Dannemeyer disapproved.

 

The day after President Clinton's inauguration, Sen. Jesse Helms performed an ecumenical paraphrase on the line about churches: "As the remarkable French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1850s, the source of American virtue . . . will always be found in the churches and synagogues of America."

 

In 1994, Bill Clinton tapped the passage to temper his "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no" speech in Boston. "I believe fundamentally in the common sense and the essential core goodness of the American people. Don't forget that Alexis de Tocqueville said a long time ago that America is great because America is good; and if America ever ceases to be good, she will no longer be great."

 

And now, synthetic Tocqueville is appearing in the 1996 campaign. Pat Buchanan used the "America is great" line in the speech announcing his candidacy, and Phil Gramm invoked the flaming pulpits in his May address to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

 

It's a shame that politicians are using a knockoff product when the real thing is so fine. Democracy in America offers profound analyses of the roles of religion, morality, and voluntary action, though its insights are subtler than the purple prose of the counterfeit.

 

Why does faux Tocqueville thrive? It took only a modest effort to expose the quotation as a phony, so how could it have circulated so widely for so long? We could make a nasty crack about politicians who cannot tell Alexis de Tocqueville from Maurice Chevalier, but that would be irrelevant since they seldom write their own material anyway. The lyrics of politics come from staffers, whose tight deadlines often keep them from checking original sources. When they need a quotation (or a statistic or an anecdote), they lift it from a speech or an article by somebody else. That somebody probably got it from another piece, whose author got it from . . . you get the picture. Bad information tends to linger and spread.

 

Here is a personal brush. In 1992, I served on the staff of the Republican platform committee. We came across the "America is great" line in an old Reagan speech. Though we could not verify it, we still wanted to use it in the platform, so we attributed it to "an old adage."

 

Of course, after decades of repetition, it has in fact become an old adage. It just isn't Tocqueville's.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

That's epic.

 

And FWIW, I think de Tocqueville is one of the most overrated authors in history.

[bucfan64 309]

Thanks vthokies4life, very interesting how a quote that was attributed to one man but never proven, has taken on a life of it's own and is now often considered to be a factual statement made by him!

 

Regardless of who said it, I think it is one of the most true statements that I have ever heard!

[Hacker 82]

That's epic.

 

And FWIW, I think de Tocqueville is one of the most overrated authors in history.

 

de Tocqueville is truly only interesting from a historical perspective now. He captures well the young nation prior to the Civil War, and rings true to the ideals about our country the Baby Boom generation were taught in school.

 

It speaks to me of the ideals of our Constitution and what we have lost and has very little bearing on how our country is today.

 

The history of the quote just goes to show that anything that is attributed wrongly to someone seems to become their own.

Edited October 1, 2011 by Hacker

[BigBlueAlum 12]

Taken from the following blog/podcast........

 

http://candcshow.com/unrepentant-america-060-coffee-cigarettes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+candcshow+%28Coffee+%26+Cigarettes%29

 

Everyone has a different idea about how to get this country on track but most people do agree it is off track. Something needs to be done. One guy is talking about the tax rate, another is talking about regulations on businesses, another is talking about media bias, another is talking about the need for a new president, and so on and so on. The problem is there aren’t too many people actually addressing the problem. We are pointing out all of the different layers of the problem–some of the by-products of the underlying problem–but not too many are really hitting on the core problem.

 

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian who lived in the 19th Century, is commonly quoted as saying, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.†I have never been able to find where or when he said that but the quote provides a pretty good summary of what de Tocqueville discovered during his first-hand study of the United States.

 

This reminds me of another great quote:

 

"One of the things I love most about the internet is that you can make up quotes and attribute them to anyone that you want."

 

-Abraham Lincoln

[vthokies4life 10]

Taken from the following blog/podcast........

 

http://candcshow.com/unrepentant-america-060-coffee-cigarettes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+candcshow+%28Coffee+%26+Cigarettes%29

 

Everyone has a different idea about how to get this country on track but most people do agree it is off track. Something needs to be done. One guy is talking about the tax rate, another is talking about regulations on businesses, another is talking about media bias, another is talking about the need for a new president, and so on and so on. The problem is there aren’t too many people actually addressing the problem. We are pointing out all of the different layers of the problem–some of the by-products of the underlying problem–but not too many are really hitting on the core problem.

 

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian who lived in the 19th Century, is commonly quoted as saying, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.†I have never been able to find where or when he said that but the quote provides a pretty good summary of what de Tocqueville discovered during his first-hand study of the United States.

In all fairness, he did say "...is commonly quoted as saying" instead of "...said". That at least lets us know that he did the same google search I did. Still though, it's funny how these "quotes" take on a life of their own.

 

I didn't mean for that article to be a thread killer though. He makes a good point by saying that people are all just pointing fingers and not addressing any problems we currently face, and therein lies the greatest problem. It's definitely a fair point.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

de Tocqueville is truly only interesting from a historical perspective now. He captures well the young nation prior to the Civil War, and rings true to the ideals about our country the Baby Boom generation were taught in school.

 

It speaks to me of the ideals of our Constitution and what we have lost and has very little bearing on how our country is today.

 

The history of the quote just goes to show that anything that is attributed wrongly to someone seems to become their own.

 

I've read Democracy in America cover-to-cover. I don't disagree that he captures the ideals of early American government and society, and I don't disagree that he does it well. I also find the take of an outsider interesting. That's it, though. There's nothing philosophically profound in the work, TBQH. It's more of a cultural observation, nothing different than if an American was to go into the jungles of Africa and write about tribal culture in glowing terms. Also, I have difficulty with reconciling de Tocqueville's pro-American bias, given the uneasy relations of Britain and America when the work was published.

 

I just don't understand the fawning over de Tocqueville that politicos seem to have, when someone like John Stuart Mill was infinitely more enlightening when speaking of contemporary democracy. Eh, to each their own.

 

And Buc, quit fighting a losing a battle. It HAS been proven that the quote was wrongly attributed...

[Deleted Account 5,203]

This reminds me of another great quote:

 

"One of the things I love most about the internet is that you can make up quotes and attribute them to anyone that you want."

 

-Abraham Lincoln

 

Style points have been awarded.

[bucfan64 309]

And Buc, quit fighting a losing a battle. It HAS been proven that the quote was wrongly attributed...

 

I didn't know I was "fighting" with anyone on this matter. I don't recall anything in my post that could even be considered arguing.

 

I simply state that regardless of who said it, I find it to be one of the best and most true quotes that I have ever heard. Perhaps you would do better to not "read" so much into every post.........

 

In addition to that, please read the post more carefully. The author says...."Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian who lived in the 19th Century, is commonly quoted as saying, “America is great because she is good."

 

Notice he said that Tocqueville is COMMONLY QUOTED AS SAYING.

 

Neither the author nor myself are saying or at any time was I ever arguing that Tocqueville is and has always been the ABSOLUTE source of the quote.....

 

chill out!

Edited October 1, 2011 by bucfan64

[Guest The Variable]

French? Pansy.