Posted on 03/26/2005 4:47:24 PM PST by srm913
Nearly 73 years ago one of the greatest democracies on earth held a general election under universal suffrage. None of several parties won an absolute majority, but one was the clear winner, doubling its vote to 37.4 percent to become the largest group in Parliament. . That autumn, President Herbert Hoover was up for re-election and the Republican convention managers might perhaps have produced a satisfied voter from that faraway country, in the way a grateful Iraqi was flourished in Washington recently by the Bush administration. Not surprisingly, they didn't do so. The country was of course Germany, and the triumphant party was the National Socialists, led by Hitler. . That 1932 election showed that democracy often raises as many problems as it answers, a lesson we may soon learn again in the Middle East. Western enthusiasm for what Tony Blair calls "a ripple of change" toward democracy there rests on two assumptions: in particular that a democratic Middle East will prove peaceable and friendly to America, and in general that democratic government is benevolent. Both assumptions deserve closer inspection.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
a. it gave the government (Hitler) the power to rule by decree for four years
b. never again until Hitler’s death in 1945, was Germany to enjoy even the semblance of political freedom
I find it interesting that some people want President Bush or Gov.Bush to rule by decree in the Schaivo case. People never learn.
Democracy is basically mob rule. A representative constitutional republic provides people with a better form of government, if they are willing to preserve, protect, and sustain it.
It took the folks in East Germany another half century to enjoy freedom.
Dear marty60,
From my perspective, it appears to me that it is unaccountable judges who are ruling by decree.
The federal and state legislatures have both acted to give Terri a chance to avoid death by torture, but the judges have ignored these laws, sweeping them aside without so much as giving enough of a pause that we might be fooled that they actually gave a damn.
The federal and state executives also both have basic law enforcement authority, and are charged to use that authority and power to defend innocent human life.
The founders never anticipated judicial supremacy in our country, that the judges would assert themselves as the final arbiter, not only of what is constitutional, but what is moral and decent, and that the rest of us would have to obey.
It is clear that the actions of the murderer greer and the other black-robed tyrants are most upset that we peons, through our elected represenatives, would think that we are self-governing. They have taken affront to the attempt to rein in their overarching arrogant dictatorship, and have told us to all get back in our places. Under their jackboots.
It seems that if you are going to make comparisons back to the time of the Nazis, it is the murderer greer and all its judicial tyrant henchmen who best play the part of the Brownshirts.
sitetest
Although failed democracy can result in problems the imposed dictatorship and monarchy causes more. Just look at the Middle East where after WWI we failed to put a democracy in many of the countries that we could have. That monumental error as resulted in many of the problems we face now.
But using the proper analogy would demonstrate that President Bush was correct in his international choices. And we cannot have that in a European newspaper, now can we?
It takes a great deal of either ignorance, or bias, or both, between the writer and the editors, to produce an article like this.
Congressman Billybob
Once the Reichstag went up in flames so did German democracy.
The author of this article is making a false comparison for one HUGE reason: after WWI, France & Britain raked Germany over the coals w/reparations payments, which destroyed the German economy & paved the way for Hitler's demagoguery. At the same time, America retreated into isolationism, doing nothing while France & Britain inadvertantly set the stage for Hitler.
In Iraq, we're doing the opposite: staying there till the Hitler types are defeated, making damn sure democracy takes hold, and putting monty INTO Iraq rather than taking it out (via reparations money, most of which went to France, since most of the fighting was done on French & Belgian soil).
Yes, democracy in Iraq will wither & die if the US leaves, cuts off aid money, and retreats into Pat Buchanan-style isolationism. It's all but guaranteed.
Yes, that was the crowning touch that helped the Nazis prevail over their arch-rival street gang, the Communists. An almost forgotten -- but revealing! -- detail of those gang wars is that the Communists and Nazis were each other's best recruiting pools. Both parties vigorously recruited members of the other. The mindsets were so similar that the street thugs felt at home with either party.
by James A Donald
If the state abandons the principle that the law should be general and uniform, and instead concocts a vast multitude of special particular rules, treating one category of person very differently from another, so that one type of property can be seized in one circumstance, and another kind in another circumstance, so that a particular category of person is given a monopoly privilege of some category of business, such as taxi driving and others are excluded or have to work for the privileged and hand over the bulk of their takings to them, then in that case, in the case where generality and uniformity are abandoned, then indeed there can be no agreement - not because men do not know what is just, but because such rules are unjust. When the rules are very particular and non uniform, then the particular groups harmed or benefited by particular rules will come into severe conflict, and this will make it necessary for the state to intervene and supervise in a multitude of matters that should be private matters between one man and another. It will become necessary for the state to take over and supervise civil society in detail.
The more a government violates the principles of uniformity and generality of the law, the more arbitrary and complex its laws become, then the more it comes to resemble an absolutist government, and the more it suffers from problems for which political absolutism appears to be the solution.
Every so often, a ruler such as King James II or Adolf Hitler, attempts to put the theories of the absolutists into effect. The theories and doctrines are immediately seen by their true face, and everyone utterly abhors them.
The absolutists then concoct a new name, and dress their doctrines in new plumage so that they sound like the normal actions of the state to sustain the rule of law, rather than what they truly are, the use of violence by the state to crush the rule of law.
Regardless of the name, and regardless of the rhetorical flourishes used to make the doctrine sound different from what it is, their doctrine remains the same: that justice is whatever courts do, that any law whatsoever is lawful, that right and wrong is what the law says it is and the law is whatever the nation says it is. This is the doctrine of absolutism, and anyone who advocates this doctrine is an absolutist, no matter how many names he thinks up for himself. Because these ideas acquired a bad odor in the seventeenth century, people are always finding new and different ways to express these ideas, so that they sound different, whilst remaining the same, but each new form of expression again acquires a bad odor when some ruler puts it into action.
The doctrine called relativism is the same as seventeenth century absolutism, but the rhetoric that the "relativists" used to defend it sounds superficially like the rhetoric used by the opponents of absolutism, just as the name sounds as if they are opponents of absolutism. In particular, the "relativists" aped John Locke's Letter concerning Toleration, but where Lock was arguing for the liberty of the citizen, the "relativists" used similar sounding language to argue for the license of nations. The "relativists" opposed Locke, while draping themselves in Lockean symbols.
In the same way the "Post Modernists" use a name that claims that their doctrine is entirely new and unconnected with what went before, and they claim that to examine modern doctrines and compare them to medieval doctrines is a foolish waste of time ("Studying dead white males"), and that one should not compare the current doctrines of "Post Modernists" with the earlier doctrines, even earlier doctrines preached by the same people. When they defend their two thousand year old positions with three hundred old arguments, they liberally decorate their arguments with meaningless and irrelevant references to the latest fashions and newest music stars, so as to give the sound and appearance that these doctrines and arguments are brand new, and absolutely unconnected to earlier doctrines.
The absolutists/ romantics/ relativists/ post modernists continually change their name and plumage in a vain effort to escape their past, but the stink of piles rotting dead lingers on them.
Dear marty60,
"I don't have a problem with your comments about the Judges. The Judiciary is completely out of control."
Then why criticize, in principle, that an executive might stand up to judicial tyranny?
sitetest
Because it is the PEOPLE that must stop this by voting these people out of office and demanding that all candidates adher to the Constitution. I will not change my mind that it is the American people that are responsible for the danger we are in now. If I hear another person talk about voting their wallet I will throw up.
Dear marty60,
"Because it is the PEOPLE that must stop this by voting these people out of office and demanding that all candidates adher to the Constitution."
I don't entirely disagree with you on this.
Nonetheless, the problem goes further. It is becoming apparent that nearly all American politicians, whether they seek office in the legislatures, the executives, or the judiciaries (and our judges are seldom anything more than two-bit politicians anymore) of our state and federal governments all accept the unconstitutional doctrine of absolute judicial supremacy.
Otherwise, the current difficulty with Terri would have turned out markedly differently.
By the way, I've had plenty of criticism heaped upon me because I will not vote my wallet first.
sitetest
It was literally a street fight for power and the Nazis won.
Your not the only one. All members of the VRWC are suspect because they think Moral and ethical issues are important. Frankly I don't know what it will take to wake the American people to wake up. Euthanasia Hospitals? Age limit on medicare. But, one way to stop it would for Congress to immediately stop all funding for research. The AMA would be shouting from high heaven. That might get some action to stop this. We are in perilous times.
Dear marty60,
I think it may be too late.
It's tough to say these things in the middle of events, but perhaps this may have been the final and fatal blow to our Republic.
The black-robed dictators have made a naked grab for power, strong-arming the federal and state legislatures and executives, and these other bodies rolled over and played dead.
But I'm not sure enough folks appreciate that that is what happened, and thus perhaps it is now too late.
sitetest
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