HEARTLESS WHEN YOUNG, NOW BRAINLESS WHEN OLD :

The Bogus Lincoln Quote Kevin Phillips Fell For (Matthew Pinsker, 6/3/02, History News Network)

Editor's Note: A generation ago Thomas Bailey proposed that the history profession maintain a computer database of historical myths so that scholars could avoid repeating hoary stories their colleagues had exposed as fakes. Alas, nobody took up Bailey's suggestion (which remains a good one!) and the myths continue to pile up like a long bad car wreck.

The latest writer to end up on this highway junk heap is Kevin Phillips. Just a few pages into his new book, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, Phillips regales the reader with a fabulous quotation from Abraham Lincoln that illustrates perfectly the theme of the new work. It's the kind of quote an author dreams of finding. You can just imagine how delighted Phillips was when he came across it. It's not just political parties that want to get right with Lincoln.

Unfortunately, Phillips was bamboozled--as was Paul Kennedy, who cited the quotation in a positive review of the book featured in the Los Angeles Times. The quote's long been known to be a fake, but as Matthew Pinsker pointed out in an essay published by the History News Service in 1999, it's taken in everybody from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter to Warren Beatty. And of course, it's made the rounds on the Internet. [...]

The bogus quotation reads as follows:

'The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace, and it conspires against it in times of adversity. It's more despotic than monarchy. It's more insolent than autocracy. It's more selfish than bureaucracy. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed.'

The embarassment of sharing an alma mater with Mr. Phillips obligates me to help clear up his mistakes--no one can account for his increasingly bizarre opinions. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 9, 2002 7:30 AM