Dear Erik,

I think you may have mistaken my intent in the previous post. While I may disagree with your contention (depending on the definition of liberal) my point was that many of these systems are really not so far from one another. The supposedly democratic systems of Great Britain and the U.S. really amounted for that period of time to Dictatorships. (We are still counting the cost of the dictatorship of FDR in the legacy of Supreme Court decisions that effectively cut religion from the public square.)

I was not arguing that dictatorships are of necessity evil. Consider what happened upon the death of Marshall Tito (about whose reign I know nothing other than the fact that he kept the region from igniting into the fireball it presently is).

No, I don't see that any governmental system is intrinsically evil, but they are all potentially so--and therein lies the problem.

shalom,

Steven

If dictatorship ends up in evil, then liberal democracy just starts closer to the source. I can think of three democracies that have enlightened laws on abortion, for instance (and I expect one of them to cave very soon). I maintain that Franco is one of the true great leaders who kept the interests of Spain above his own. Mussolini did too, in his own way. His problem was that he confounded his own interest with that of the Sons of Aeneas. I think he would have been a great leader had he not crawled in bed with the Austrian house painter.

Erik,

There is good reason to argue that the vast majority of world leaders at about that time were essentially dictators. FDR, while elected, really simply reigned from his high throne--ditto Churchill, of Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini there can be no question.

Truly enlightened monarchies are examples whereof you speak. However, to expose my Robert Frost side--I know enough of humankind to know that what starts benevolent generally devolves to self-interest given sufficient time.

shalom,

Steven

Steven,

You really are an Italian at heart! I have to stick up for dictators, though, well, at least one dictator. I believe that in my lifetime I will see Francisco Franco y Bahamonde canonized. Authority, when used to further good goals, is not a necessary evil, rather a good. A society needs leaders that way families need fathers, orders need superiors, and churches need the Pope.

As to sausages, I believe I posted my recipe earlier, but I would be happy to do it again next time I make sausage (I tend to improvise, and would like to measure things before giving specific directions).

And, John, the idea of how Dean would respond to the pressures of the presidency makes me giggle. Of course, I would be doing my giggling from afar, as a Dean Presidency would almost make me consider immediate exile (unlike the H. Clinton Presidency which would REQUIRE immediate exile, although (watch out, ye who are offended by blatant sexism) I would probably leave the country as fast as I walk out of mass when a nun preaches if any women were elected to Commander-in-Chief.

E-Did you see the clip (on FOX, of course) of Dean tearing into an old guy who called him "pompous"? It was scary-actually being Prez is a hell of a lot more stressful than some guy's question at a campaign stop...J

Dear Erik,

Yes, dictator would be nice, I suppose. But I'm with the peasants in Holy Grail La-La land the best government is an anarcho-synidicalist commune. Yes, and it means an awful lot of lovely filth to sling around.

Nice, interesting post. Oh and the McGovern comparison is very apt, I think. If the Dems are idiotic enough to allow Howard Dean to run, unless Bush botches like his dad he should be able to stomp Dean nearly as neatly as Nixon did McGovern.

(Action heroes make the best governors--fine symbolic figure heads who never really get around to doing much of anything.)

As my motto goes--gridlock means that the average person is left alone!

shalom,

Steven

I agree 100% on politics (I am sort of perversely interested in finding out how sausage is made--I did read The Jungle in HS and gave their sausage recipe a thumbs down; but, on the other hand, my mom's attempts with home-chopped pork and a Sears meat grinder came up too boring).

I think all presidents are figureheads. Even if one did manage to galvanize public opinion, the gears of bureaucracy would bog him down. And if he could manage to get the bureaucracy aligned with him, the press would find something to report.

Even a dictator (however benevolent) is ultimately Satan's tool. Temporarily.

Actually, I was referring to all the public angst more than the actual break-in, I always knew Nixon was a crook. I lived through his governorship. I am also not fond of Reagan - first he crashed the California economy, and then eventually the national one, and he was smart enough to do it with a delayed action fuse. Reagan signed California's very liberal abortion law pre-Roe v Wade, and turned the state into a haven for gynecological butchers.

Alicia,

Actually I am far too cynical (Italianate perhaps?) in my view of politics for something like Watergate to have disturbed me. You will probably be horrified to learn that I find breaking into opposition headquarters a very minor transgression, and, given the Puritanical overreaction to such things that can be expected, a cover-up is natural.

Sure it is the job of the opposition to scream bloody murder, but they were the guys financed by Castro, not Nixon (remember this is what the expeditionary force was looking for). I was hardly bugged by Iran Contragate either. This is politics.

To quote Blood and Iron Bismark: "If you like laws and sausages, it is better you not know how they are made."

I got a different view of Nixon by reading Chuck Colson's book (his testimony, actually).
You young uns that didn't actually live through Watergate are very fortunate.

Bravo, Erik. I read somewhere that even Nixon's wife addressed him as "Mr. President". Some people laugh at that. I don't. He was a tragically flawed leader, to be sure, but he believed in the presidency.