TALLAHASSEE - It takes bad news sometimes to remind us that we need government more than it needs us. The latest evidence of this is the discovery that mad cow disease has, perhaps inevitably, penetrated U.S. borders. There may be some rugged individualists in the livestock business who would have preferred for that to be hushed up, but everyone else welcomes what the government is doing, however belatedly, to ensure the safety of American beef, not to mention the viability of that market. When it comes to food safety, we need more government, not less.
But you don't have to be paranoid to worry about government going too far the other way. The latest evidence of that came in the news last week that the FBI has advised police agencies to be suspicious of people carrying almanacs. Alamanacs, it seems, list tall buildings, dams, reservoirs and other potential terrorist targets.
When I heard this from a colleague who had read the paper before I did I thought she was confusing New Year's with April 1st. If only.
This is the same FBI, after all, that was recently empowered to snoop into your library records without you ever knowing about it. So it's only a matter of time, I suppose, before some high school teacher's geography assignment leads to a red alert for a potential terrorist cell at the local library.
And immigrants studying for their citizenship exams - especially those from the Middle East - would be prudent, perhaps, to find some other sources for the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the names of our past presidents.
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Speaking of big government, people whose instincts run against it (except, of course, when it comes to subsidies or contracts) frequently quote what Abraham Lincoln supposedly had to say on the subject.
Among his famous "Ten Points": "You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. . . . You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. . . . You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. . . . "
President Reagan quoted the "Ten Points" in a speech. They regularly appear in ads andeditorials marking Lincoln's birthday. They happen to be a favorite utterance of Florida TaxWatch, which displays nine of them on the inside back cover of its recent annual report.
Trouble is, Lincoln never said anything of the sort. The actual author was a clergyman named William John Henry Boetcker, who was born eight years after Lincoln's death.
Among the many sources documenting this is the official Web site of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (www.illinoishistory.gov)
Spurious Lincoln quotations cut both ways. Liberals often cite with approval Lincoln's supposed warning, in a letter written in 1864, that "as a result of the war, corporations have become enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. . . . The money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its rule by preying upon the prejudice of the people, until all wealth is concentrated in a few hands, and the republic destroyed."
What a prophet, some would say. But Lincoln never said that either, according to the spring 1999 newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association. See www.alincolnassoc.com)
In 1890, John J. Nicolay, one of Lincoln's secretaries, called the passage a forgery originating in a patent medicine pamphlet. Much later, Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's only surviving son, described it as "simply an impudent invention."
As the newsletter points out, Robert Lincoln, a railroad executive, was himself "an attorney for the so-called "Robber Barons.' " Even so, concludes the article, "the preponderance of evidence undermines the credibility of the quotation as originating with Abraham Lincoln. Quite simply, he never wrote it."
These are hardly the only suspect Lincoln quotations. Does it really matter whether he did or didn't say them?
You bet it matters. As one of our three greatest presidents, Lincoln is an American icon. To misquote him on behalf of a political cause - whatever the cause - is just as shabby as to misquote him for the sake of selling snake oil.
"Separating authentic words, reflecting a historical actor's thinking on a topic, from inauthentic or attributed words, reflecting the thinking of someone other than the historical actor, is significant in obtaining a clear understanding of the past," wrote Illinois State Historian Thomas F. Schwartz on the agency's Web site. "Many of the spurious quotations are so modern in tone and character that most people will recognize that the words were devised to express and plead a special cause or interest. . . . " Debunking the "Ten Points" will not, alas, make them go away. This particular weed has spread its roots too deep, too far, to be uprooted by competent scholarship. That would be too much to hope for.
But let it at least be the last of them from Florida TaxWatch.
