[SirLinksalot]

I thought I should post this here as I do often hear speeches from conservatives still attributing the above stirring quote to Alexis De Tocqueville.

It might do us well to get our history straight.

[madprof98]

Zell Miller used this quote in his speech at Atlanta's March for Life last week.

[atomicpossum]

I suppose you'll tell me that Sir Linksalot didn't write 'Baby Got Back,' now, too.

[TiaS]

Say what you want about the famous quote attributed to Tocqueville -- it's like feeding chicken soup to a corpse, it ain't going to hurt anything.

[Bender2]

It is entirely all my fault. I cut that passage out and ate it with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

[Christopher Lincoln]

Do you think that's bad? I have heard lawyers and judges cite laws that do not exist.

[Lorianne]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.

[ansel12]

"It might do us well to get our history straight."


Truth is everything, we must always fight to keep history as accurate as we can. (Does anyone know this better than conservatives?)

[VOYAGER]

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.

Granted for lack of proof this beautiful writing was not written by de Tocqueville for clarity's sake who did write it?

Or is your information that he wasn't the author comes from the same place that your response comes from; "I don't know"?

Please solve this psuedo mystery for us who want to know!

[billbears]

I thought I should post this here as I do often hear speeches from conservatives still attributing the above stirring quote to Alexis De Tocqueville.

Which conservative did you hear that used this quote?

[tarheelswamprat]

we attributed it to "an old adage."

Isn't that a bit redundant?

[Old Professer]

I did find this with a Google search: As everyone knows, Alexis de Tocque­ ville’s Democracy in America is filled with valuable observations about the United States. America’s unprecedented social equality, its freedom, its vibrant intermediary institutions, even its volatile racial situation—all of these subjects are treated with a depth and subtlety that have yet to be surpassed. And then there is Tocque­ ville’s revealing, and less frequently noted, discussion of the surprising relationship between Enlightenment and Christianity in America. The United States is a country, he claims, that combines widespread Enlightenment with a deep and abiding faith in God. Just as, for Americans, “it is the observance of divine laws that guides man to freedom,” so it is that “religion . . . leads [him] to Enlightenment.” Link

[Old Professer]

The editing window closed so the pagination on the last post doesn't have paragraph breaks, sorry.

[kalee]

ping

[null and void]

Oh. Ya learn the darnest things on FR.

[gobucks]

He did write this regarding religion and Democracy and, ahem, Islam:

Mohammed professed to derive from Heaven, and has inserted in the Koran, not only religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science.

The Gospel, on the contrary, speaks only of the general relations of men to God and to each other, beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith.

This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, while the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.

At the time he wrote this, as I recall, the Ottoman Turkish Empire was still quite large ....

[starfish923]

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.

Do you know how much faith I have in the first-year college student (all of 18-years-old and his professor (left wing communist leanings perhaps, hoping to drive this "find" to a book)?
ZERO.

Let's determine the accuracy of the student and professor and what their agenda might possibly be.
Let's verify these verifiers.

Just because THEY didn't find it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Did they go to France and read French resources? Did they read French resources here? Or was this merely a Google search?
Like I said, I trust THEIR methodology and judgement as much as I trust MSNBC's.

[Ramius]

It's a good line, with a lot of truth in it.

While it would be interesting to find out who did in fact come up with it first... the inability to attribute it doesn't change the essence of the point.

This article doesn't even prove for that matter that Tocqueville didn't say it. This article merely points out that it isn't in Democracy in America, where everybody thought it was. It does sound like something Tocqueville might have said... and it remains possible that he did say it. He just didn't say it in that book.

It's a little over the top to call any of it a "lie". To discover that something you've always thought to be true... is not... is hardly a lie. It's a mistake. I scarcely think that there's been some farreaching conspiracy to go around attributing interesting quotes to obscure French writers. Maybe there was, but I missed the meetings.

[marron]

Since we can no longer attribute it to De Toqueville, in future just credit me with it.

If I've said it once, I've said it, well, a dozen times. OK, not in print, but I said it.

So just say, "as the mighty marron often said..."

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Kind of like the famous speach of Chief Seattle, which he never made but was the product of a 1970's writer.

[shield]

bttt