An unattributed quote which has legs!

Fake quotes on the Internet are nothing new, and the biggest problem with them is the difficulty of disproving them. The more famous the person quoted, the greater the likelihood that everything he said for public consumption exists in an accessible archive somewhere, and that if the attributed quote is not to be found there, it becomes unlikely that he ever actually said it. This puts the onus of proof on whoever is citing the famous person (where it should have been in the first place).

Anyway, while I have blogged about this particular quote before, I have never been able to track it down.

You’d think I would have learned by now that blogging about problems does not make problems go away, that nothing can be debunked on the Internet, and that attempting to do so is a silly waste of time.

But no, I guess I am stubborn. So, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, here I go again. I referred to Reagan, because this post is yet another attempt to track down and find one of his most famous quotes — the one about conservatism being a “three legged stool.” Its latest invocation takes the form of a pamphlet being circulated at CPAC:

stoolbeaver_s

Just look at that wicked homo beaver, eating away at Reagan’s famous stool! (What’s next? A marijuana-motif critter eating away at a leg representing Reagan’s War on Drugs?)

From the pamphlet’s text:

Most conservatives are familiar with the wise and winning strategic insight of President Ronald Reagan, when he compared the American conservative movement to a three-legged stool, where each leg stands for one of the three main foci of American conservative activism: defense, fiscal, and social. Again and again, he drilled home to us that, exactly like a real stool, all three types of conservative action are necessary for the movement to stand. This winning strategy has delivered victory after victory to the movement since the eighties.

When Reagan used this expressive image, he obviously was not implying that the three legs were mutually exclusive, in the sense that a social conservative cannot also be a defense or fiscal conservative; or that a fiscal conservative cannot be a defense or social one. This would make no sense, as the majority of American conservatives, in our opinion, are conservative, in varying degrees, on all three legs. They are, simultaneously, defense (anti-pacifist, anti-Islamist, strong military, sovereignty, etc.), fiscal (anti-socialist, smaller and less intrusive government, lower tax burden, etc.), and social (faith witnessed to in the public square; anti-abortion; anti-same-sex “marriage,” anti-euthanasia, etc.) conservatives. They are staunch across-the-board conservatives.

I think before we get into the merits of what Reagan meant or argue over how to apply his alleged philosophy, simple fairness dictates that the quote be located. It is supposed to be an argument to authority — that of Ronald Reagan. It ought to go without saying that for there to even be an argument to authority, the authority has to have actually said what purports to have been said by him.

Googling the phrase, I found innumerable references to the quote. This is typical:

Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds true conservatism. The legs are represented by a strong defense, strong free-market economic policies and strong social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.

The “stool” quote is of course repeated in many places, and I have diligently clicked on many of them hoping to find a link to any attribution, but could find none. (Another writer who gives no attribution sees Reagan’s stool as involving not so much unity on beliefs, but as a symbol of three way coalition of “religious conservatives, national security conservatives, and economic/libertarian conservatives.” But again, no quote is cited.)

But he “often” spoke of the sacrosanct “stool,” right? What does “often” mean these days? How about just one instance? Is that asking too much?

I know I am sounding like one of those cranks who picks nits every time he finds someone being wrong on the Internet, but this three legged stool has become a pretty well-established meme. And it just strikes me that if you are going to build a meme from a famous person’s quote, you need to have the real quote, and not just something you want the person to have said.

MORE: The Attack of the Rabid Rainbow Beaver!


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17 responses to “An unattributed quote which has legs!”

  1. Simon Avatar

    Yes. The GOP is a stool. But I digress.

    Ronnie evidently thought Iran-Contra was a good idea. A triangular deal in which Ollie North transported cocaine to America to support the Contras. That was also part of Ronnie’s War On Drugs.

  2. Simon Avatar

    BTW. Isn’t a beaver the wrong symbol for homos?

  3. Simon Avatar

    From: http://www.brennerbrief.com/cpac2014-attack-rabid-rainbow-beaver/

    “Why is GOProud a welcomed and official guest at CPAC, when it advocates the legalization of same-sex ‘marriage,’ thus undermining the votes and dreams of millions of God-fearing Americans?”

    The only reason they should fear God is if they are doing wrong.

  4. Randy Avatar
    Randy

    Morality =/= Religious Proclamations

    If we had stayed with religion as our guide to morality: slavery would still be legal, unruly children could be stoned to death, adulterers could be stoned to death, women who aren’t virgins when marrying could be stoned to death, a person picking up sticks on the Sabbath could be stoned to death, thieves could have their hands chopped off, heretics or blasphemers could be maimed or executed, etc.

    I thank the FSM that we no longer use religion as our guide for morality any more.

  5. Randy Avatar
    Randy

    Simon-

    It’s always fun when the Trojans of the University of Southern California take on the Beavers of the University of Oregon in collegiate athletic competition.

  6. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    Simon wrote;
    “BTW. Isn’t a beaver the wrong symbol for homos?”

    I guess it would depend on which constituency of GOPProud is being referenced.

    Alternatives might be a plaid shirt, (Lumberjack Song) or a vacuum cleaner. (H/T Jerry Seinfeld)

  7. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    Eric,

    I thought that if anything had “legs” on the internet, it would be unattributed quotes. Wasn’t it George Washington who said “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet?”

    And yes, I loved the double entendre in that title. Or was it a triple?

  8. Randy Avatar
    Randy

    @Simon

    “Why is GOProud a welcomed and official guest at CPAC, when it advocates the legalization of same-sex ‘marriage,’ thus undermining the votes and dreams of millions of God-fearing Americans?”

    It seems that conservatism is not so much a political movement these days, but rather it seems to serve as a national platform for religious fundamentalists to flip the bird at our morally and culturally pluralistic society.

    They seem to think they are entitled to live in a land were anything they don’t like or that falls outside of their Christian moral dictates must be forbidden. They act as if their belief in God entitles them to rule. That is their dream. And that is what is meant by them in your referenced comment: “… dreams of millions of God-fearing Americans.”

    They think they own the country. They forget that our government was formed by, of, and for the people. It wasn’t formed for the people and their god(s).

  9. Veeshir Avatar

    c andrew, no, it was Lincoln who said that.

    The problem is that I am in favor of public morality, I’m not in favor of it being forced on use by the gov’t.

  10. Eric Scheie Avatar

    I was kind of hoping that someone could track down the actual quote. But perhaps I am asking the impossible. If Reagan never said that, there would be no way to track it down.

    And if he never said it, what’s up with that? Do these people think they can just put their words in his mouth whenever they want and get away with it?

    (I guess that was a stupid rhetorical question….)

  11. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Reagan was brilliant at co-opting the Christian vote by paying lip service to their values without actually doing much about it. How often did he attend church? It was Bill Clinton who had a weekly photo op toting his pet bible into any convenient black church, not Reagan.

    For previous generations the roundheads flocked to the democrats, not the republicans. William Jennings Bryan was a democrat, for example. The urban immigrant catholic population was, and mostly still is, democrat. Mostly because they like the corruption and government jobs.

    Meanwhile

    How did gay marriage become such a hot button issue anyway?

    I mean really, WTF??? Everyone should just shut up about it.

  12. Janet C Avatar
    Janet C

    Why do I think it’s Buckley who originated the “three legged stool” thing? Of course, my 90 second googling couldn’t find an exact quote, and I don’t want to spend more than 90 seconds on this.

  13. Janet C Avatar
    Janet C

    Oh and related, if a rainbow beaver can destroy the social leg of this mythical stool, more power to rainbow beavers!

  14. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    I just noticed –
    Brown shoes with a blue suit. gagggghhh!

    Conservatives have to do better than that if they want my vote.

  15. Eric Scheie Avatar

    Interesting comment MMM. Reagan, a Hollywood star from the old days, would never have committed such a fashion faux pas.

    Yet the people who want to put words in his mouth also want to put the wrong shoes on his feet.

    I doubt this was conscious; I suspect it was simply a clueless reflection of their own tackiness.

  16. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    MMM wrote;

    ” Brown shoes with a blue suit. gagggghhh!”

    Yes, I prefer the calf height black socks, dress shoes, and Bermuda shorts! Now that’s the fashion look of the future. I’d bet my bippy on it.

  17. Eric Scheie Avatar

    c andrew, that look was still in style in the U.S. (both for school boys and as informal men’s wear) when I was a kid. It disappeared in the late 1960s. But not in Bermuda.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_shorts

    Whether it would come back in style here, who knows? Right now, I suspect if you dressed that way, you would get some strange looks, which means most men would not go for it. So, the hipsters, gays, and fashion victims would probably have to be the first to revive it.