This phony quote has been making the rounds on the internet again:
"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and any assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." -Falsely attributed to Cicero, 55 B.C.E.
Some mutations say "public debt should be reduced" and "the mobs should be forced to work". (It's so hard to find good slaves these days.) The quote has cropped up in conservative corners of the internet (where else?), from the distinguished pages of Forbes.com, to user signatures on forums about Ron Paul and gun ownership, websites about liberty and free markets, and so on.
But the quote is "almost certainly spurious", according to Respectfully Quoted: a Dictionary of Quotations. It appears to come from A Pillar of Iron, a work of historical fiction written several decades ago by Taylor Caldwell. The book has been criticized as excessively fictional. I haven't read it; forgive me for judging this book by its cover:
I'm picturing a movie version of this, where Cicero is played by Antonio Banderas; in the last fight scene he says some one-liner like "Not in my Rome!" before throwing Julius Caesar from the top of the Senate.
This false quote, and others, have inspired the Freakonomics blog to develop three cardinal rules to help identify phony quotes:
This false quote, and others, have inspired the Freakonomics blog to develop three cardinal rules to help identify phony quotes:
In my experience, these rules are true too often; beware quotes with these properties.Quotation Rule #1: Quotes that a politically conservative quoter disagrees with that are attributed to Lenin, Stalin, or Hitler are almost always phony.Quotation Rule #2: Quotes that a politically conservative quoter agrees with that are attributed toLincoln are almost always phony.Quotation Rule #3: Quotes that a politically conservative quoter attributes to classical figures like Cicero, and that criticize modern, allegedly liberal trends are almost always phony.
Freyguy,
ReplyDeleteI find historical (and other) distortions by right wing hate-mongering morons discouraging. Cartoon characterizations cheapen discourse and distract from what may (or may not) be the underlying validity of a point of view. Equally, if not more discouraging, it allows the opposing side to brand people who agree with the underlying premise as radicals or bigots. And while the mainstream media is prone to pick up on right-wing mischaracterizations (such as the Birthers) it tends to be less vigilant policing the Left.
For example when a special election was called for the 26th New York Congressional District, I did not hear outrage about the Mediscare promulgated with millions of Democratic dollars - the one about the Ryan Plan (which would impact those 55 or under) taking grandma’s Medicare benefits away. Or perhaps it’s only that 75 is the new 55.
More recently those Tea Party radicals – you know, the ones that forced Obama to consider the possibility that deficits are a problem – were willing to shut down the government and destroy the economy if they didn’t get their way. Not so Obama who said he would veto any extension of the debt ceiling that did not diffuse the issue past the 2012 elections. So other than being less principled the Obama position was different from the Tea Party position how?
Moving to more positive recollections I cheered right along with the House members to see Gabrielle Giffords brave her disabilities to vote in favor of what she described as a critically important bill to keep the government in the money. In this she was joined by a majority of the Tea Party. Not so the Pelosi wing. Fully half (and less than half without Giffords) voted against raising the debt ceiling. The silence of the media about this betrayal of America by radical Left wing ideologues was deafening - my ears are still ringing.
So my advice Freyguy is to not let the more extreme idiots on the Right get to you. They annoy me enough for the both of us. Besides, without them the Left might feel a whole lot less certain of the rightness of its own causes.
Fred,
ReplyDeleteI just want to clarify why and how I came to write that post. You know, originally I just saw this Cicero quote floating around. Coincidentally, in the last year I read a biography of Cicero; I also read some of Caesar's memoirs and an abridged version of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And this Cicero quote just seemed fishy to me. How did I miss Cicero's interest in balancing the deficit by weening slaves off public assistance?
Seriously though: I wanted to find out whether this quote was genuine. I was going to write about how this is a false quotation, and that was going to be it.
But then I ran across the post on the Freakonomics blog. It's not exactly a left-wing blog -- they seem to be quite skeptical of global warming over there. Freakonomics was chasing down quotes requested by its readers, and this quote was one of them. They noticed they were receiving a large volume of misquotes from conservatives. And they called a spade a spade.
So at the risk of irking you and the Old Man (a risk now realized), I decided to do the same. The sources playing around with history, in this case, are conservative. No use avoiding the obvious.
I certainly was not trying to disparage the underlying premise of balancing the budget. The question is, should we balance it by cutting social programs and reducing taxes for the wealthy to an historic low; or, should we tolerate the second-lowest tax on the wealthy in modern history, and reduce spending on foreign wars?
This issue is touchy, I think, because when liberals speak of "the wealthy" they usually mean millionaires; but conservatives know well that everyone earning over $300,000 or so falls into the same income tax bracket as Bill Gates. Not all of them feel so rich after years of hard work and after paying for healthcare, college, etc. So how about adding one or two new tax brackets to account for these enormous differences in wealth? Warren Buffett, of all people, proposes increasing payroll and capital gains taxes only on those earning over $1 million, and a further increase on those earning over $10 million, but keeping the Obama payroll tax cuts. Something to consider.
Er, I meant to say, "balance the budget" (not the deficit) and "weaning" (not weening)!
ReplyDelete