authoritarian
- Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.
- Of, relating to, or expecting unquestioning obedience.
totalitarianOf, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority excercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed.
American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition
fascism
- a sytem of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator,
stringent economic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of beligerent nationalism and racism.- A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
- Oppressive, dictatorial control.
American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Attributed to Noah Webster
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
James Madison, Federalist 47
Gary Farber
Post to the blog Amygdala, 02 AUG 2008
King Milinda asks the sage Nagasena:"Bhante Nagasena, how do the wise converse?"
-- "Your majesty, when the wise converse, whether they become entangled by their opponents’ arguments or extricate themselves, whether they or their opponents are convicted of error, whether their own superiority or that of their opponents is established, nothing in all this can make them angry. Thus, your majesty, do the wise converse."
"And how, bhante, do kings converse?"
-- "Your majesty, when kings converse, they advance a proposition, and whoever opposes it, they order his punishment, saying, ‘Punish this fellow!’ Thus, your majesty, do kings converse."
"Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence."
John Locke
Two Treatises of Government,
bk. 2, ch. 19, sect. 221, p. 412
Quoted here
The End of History and the Last Man
by Francis Fukuyama
page 305
"The legislative job of the President is especially important to the people who have no special representatives to plead their cause before Congress -- and that includes the great majority. I sometimes express it by saying the President is the only lobbyist that one hundred and fifty million Americans have. The other twenty million are able to employ people to represent them -- and that’s all right, it’s the exercise of the right of petition -- but someone has to look after the interests of the one hundred and fifty million that are left."
Harry S. Truman, speech to the Press and Union League Club,
San Francisco, California, October 25, 1956
Quoted here
Patrick Henry, 1775
The “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” Speech
Secret Saudi History . (Or here)
by Sarah Whalen.
"The Author is a professor at Loyola University School of Law"
The Palestine Chronicle, 26 AUG 3003
"Ken Kesey's 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , provides an illustration of the totalitarian aspiration.... not simply to deprive the new Soviet man (sic) of his freedom, but to make him fear freedom in favor of security, and to affirm the goodness of his chains even in the abscence of coercion."
The End of History and the Last Man
by Francis Fukuyama
p 24
- Please see a page on this site on / "Fascism Lite" /
"What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. ~ The crises and reforms (real reforms too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ~ To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted.' ~ Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. ~ Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) ... You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."
They Thought They Were Free : The Germans, 1933-35
by Milton Sanford Mayer
-- Unfortunately I don't know what the tildes stand for in the text here
and I don't have a print copy of the book handy.
"This itself is a powerful indication that American democracy is dead. With the exception of right-wing talk radio, everyone in America now knows that the invasion of Iraq was based on false information. Yet, 40 percent of the public and both political parties in Congress still support the ongoing war. ...You should read this in its entirety.
Despite overwhelming evidence that the "war on terror" is in fact a war for terror, Republicans still cheer when Bush says we have to "fight them over there" so they don't come "over here." ...
There is an even greater cost of the war – the legal system that protects liberty, a human achievement for which countless numbers of people gave their lives over the centuries. The Bush administration used Sept. 11 to whip up fear and hysteria and to employ these weapons against American liberty. The Orwellian-named PATRIOT Act has destroyed habeas corpus. The executive branch has gained the unaccountable power to detain American citizens on mere suspicion or accusation, without evidence, and to hold Americans indefinitely without a trial.
Foolishly, many Americans believe this power can only be used against terrorists. Americans don't realize that the government can declare anyone to be a terrorist suspect. As no evidence is required, it is entirely up to the government to decide who is a terrorist. Thus, the power is unaccountable. Unaccountable power is the source of tyranny. ...
In the U.S. today nothing stands in the way of the arbitrary exercise of power by government. Federal courts have acquiesced in unconstitutional detention policies. There is no opposition party, and there is no media, merely huge conglomerates or collections of federal broadcasting licenses, the owners of which are afraid to displease the government. ...
The identical cronyism and corrupt government contract practices, by which taxpayers' money is used to reward political contributors, so evident in Iraq is now evident in New Orleans. ...
As Professor Claes Ryn made clear in his book, America the Virtuous, the neoconservatives are neo-Jacobins. There is nothing conservative about them. They are committed to the use of coercion to impose their agenda. Their attitude is merciless toward anyone in their way, whether fellow citizen or foreigner. "You are with us or against us." For those on the receiving end, the Nazi and Jacobin mentalities come to the same thing.
The Bush administration has abandoned American principles. It is a Jacobin regime. Woe to its citizens and the rest of the world."
"It's the morning of the second day of the most bizarre PR campaign the Vancouver Police Department has staged. Desperate times call for unusual measures and the VPD, mired in allegations of abuse and excessive use of force, has invited the media to a two-day seminar called Police Use of Force Awareness Training for the Media.Emphasis is mine -- ed.
Eleven reporters and camera operators show up for the media-digest version of police boot camp. Before it's all over, I'll have learned how to defuse a volatile confrontation, drop a bad guy to the ground, deploy pepper spray, wield a baton and apply deadly force from the business end of a semi-automatic Beretta. How all this will enrich or enlighten this newspaper's coverage of city policing, I honestly do not know. But I wouldn't mess with me now, not unless you can drop eight .40-calibre rounds into centre mass in six seconds.
The seminar is Sgt. Clive Milligan's baby.
... driving home from the police range, I couldn't shake what Sgt. Milligan told me when I asked him what message he's trying to get across to you, our readers and viewers and listeners.
"We'd like to get the message out to the public," says Milligan. "Do as you're told and you won't be hurt."
"The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful."A must-read.
"... James Madison, on April 20, 1795, wrote: 'Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few'. "
"Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
"As a government's power is more unrestrained, as its power reaches into all the corners of culture and society, and as it is less democratic, then the more likely it is to kill its own citizens. There is more than a correlation here. As totalitarian power increases, democide multiplies until it curves sharply upward when totalitarianism is near absolute. As a governing elite has the power to do whatever it wants, whether to satisfy its most personal desires, to pursue what it believes is right and true, it may do so whatever the cost in lives. In this case power is the necessary condition for mass murder. Once an elite have it, other causes and conditions can operate to bring about the immediate genocide, terrorism, massacres, or whatever killing an elite feels is warranted.
Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children in cold blood ..."
"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals,
by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."
Ann Coulter here
keyword search bushlegacy bushl goplegacy gopl gwblegacy gwbl worstpresident . . . . . . .
"... we can leave it to Dean Esmay to explain what should be done with such "vermin" (via Glenn Greenwald at Hullabaloo) (original at http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1134887547.shtml ):
(Mr. Esmay is discussing journalists who divulged U.S. covert surveillance of Al Qaeda.)
'When I say "treason" I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead.
No sympathy. No mercy. Am I angry? You bet I am. But not in an explosive way. Just in the same seething way I was angry on 9/11.
These people have endangered American lives and American security. They need to be found, tried, and executed.'
... Meanwhile, Brad R. at Sadly, No! (originally from Dale Franks at QandO) took note of another right-wing blogger's execution fantasies, this time Dean Franks:
'I'll make a deal with the Left: You wanna impeach President Bush? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. In fact, let's just go to the polls and turn the whole government over to the Democrats. You wanna run the whole show? Fine. Elect Howard Dean President. End all surveillance against possible enemy combatants, unless you can get a warrant based on probable cause. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. Permanently kill the PATRIOT Act. Do whatever you want to do. I'm perfectly willing, at this point, to do it your way.
I mean, really, what's the worst that can happen? An American city goes up in nuclear fire? Well, it’ll probably be New York, Chicago, or LA. You know, a major city. I don't live there, nor do most Americans. So we'll be fine.
But here's the other half of the deal: If that happens, we get to march on Washington,
drag you naked and screaming from your offices, and hang you from the ornate lampposts that line The Mall.'keyword search bushlegacy bushl goplegacy gopl gwblegacy gwbl worstpresident . . . . . . .
You know what? This isn't that unfair. I might even agree to this, with one little codicil:
In the event that the politicians in power in the USAOh wait, these things've already happened, haven't they?
- make undeclared war against another country under the false pretext that said country has weapons of mass destruction,
- bulldoze the civil rights of U.S. citizens under the pretext of a "war on terrorism",
- convert the goodwill of most other countries in the world to scorn,
- convert a multi-billion-dollar budget surplus into a multi-billion-dollar deficit while enriching the upper 5% of the populace at the expense of everyone else,
- and that they do all this professing to uphold Judeo-Christian principles, while trashing everything that Jesus ever advocated --
Then the Progressives and " Liberals" get to drag the supporters of those politicians from their offices, and hang them from whatever gibbet may be convenient.
Hope your affairs are in order, guys.
In reality, I'm a (moderate) pacifist. I don't believe that anybody should be hanging, shooting, or bombing anybody, except in the last extreme of self-defense.
I'd also like to point out that the original post quoted here conflates "the Left" (as in "people who would end all warrentless surveillance against possible enemy combatants, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately, and permanently kill the PATRIOT Act") with "Democrats". In reality, in my humble opinion, the Democrats do not advocate such actions, and if in power would continue most of the Republican policies unchanged.
"A federal budget that will spend more money in a single year than the entire GDP of France and three times what it cost to fight World War II can hardly be disparaged as inadequate or celebrated as tight-fisted. Uncle Sam, Inc., will spend more money in just this year than it spent combined between 1787 and 1900 — even after adjusting for inflation. (!!! True?) Ironically enough, we are now celebrating the ten-year anniversary of Newt Gingrich's bold declaration that 'we Republicans will make government smaller and smarter.' It didn't exactly turn out that way, given that the budget is now nearly $1 trillion larger than it was when the Republican revolution was launched.
But the truth is that, in recent decades, neither political party has been a particularly good steward of taxpayer resources. Government ingests about four-to-five-times more of America's national output today than in 1900. The government's share of everything we produce and earn has about doubled since the end of World War II. ...
Even with the recent increases in the military budget in the new age of terrorism, a smaller share of federal spending is devoted to national defense — ironically, the one area of the budget where Congress has a clear constitutional authority to spend money — than at just about any other time in U.S. history. Traditionally, about one-third to one-half of all federal expenditures were for national security. Now that percentage is down to less than one-fifth.
Almost all of the growth of government in this past fifty years has been a result of increased civilian social-program spending. ...
Dollar by trillion dollar we are voluntarily giving up our liberties for a government that promises us, in return, a blanket of protection from cradle to coffin. Republicans are steering us in the direction of the "workers' paradise" of a European socialist welfare state. The reply from the Democrats is faster, faster."
"PALAST: ... We want to know whether George W Bush won the election or did brother Jeb steal it for him? Our investigation suggest the answer lies in this shuttered building and in a very expensive contract between Governor Jeb's division of elections and a private company named DBT, which accidentally wiped off the voter rolls thousands of Democratic voters. ... we have come to ask Mr Clayton Roberts, the director, a few questions. Roberts agreed to talk, but became a bit uncomfortable when he learned that we had obtained the secret DBT contract, and asked him if he knew what DBT were up to.-- Emphasis and links are mine -- ed.
CLAYTON ROBERTS: Florida Director of Elections No, I didn't ask DBT. They do what we contract them to do. We have a statute that says we have to have a private company to do this. We put it out for bid, we put it out for bid, and I think I'm done with this interview.
PALAST: Let me just show you the contract if I could Mr Roberts. It says here in the contract that the verification is supposed to be done by DBT. That you paid them $4 million. It could look to others, don't you think, that you paid $4 million to purchase this election for the Republican party. 95% wrong on the felon list. Mr. Roberts, could you answer the question regarding the contract... Instead, Mr Roberts called out State troopers. ... Did Governor Jeb Bush, his Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and her Director of Elections, Clayton Roberts, know they had wrongly barred 22,000 black, Democrat voters before the elections? After the elections did they use their powers to prevent the count of 20,000 votes for the Democrats? ... This is Database Technologies. This is the company that the state of Florida hired to remove the names of people who committed serious crimes from the voter lists. I have obtained a document marked "confidential and trade secret". It says the company was paid millions of dollars to make telephone calls to verify they got the right names -- but they didn't. There is nothing in the state of Florida files that says they made these telephone calls. So the question remains, why did the Republican leaders of this state pay millions for a list that stopped thousands of innocent Democrats from voting? The first list from DBT included 8,000 names from Texas supplied by George Bush's state officials. They said they were all felons, serious criminals barred from voting. As it turns out, almost none were. Local officials raised a ruckus and DBT issued a new list naming 58,000 felons. But the one county which went through the whole expensive process of checking the new list name by name found it was still 95% wrong. ... Jeb Bush's Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, stopped them counting these votes (from certain Florida counties) .... Harris was a busy woman. In charge of Florida's vote count and co-chair of Bush's presidential campaign."
"A federal appeals court yesterday backed the president's power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil without any criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.
... Avidan Cover, a senior associate at Human Rights First, said the ruling 'really flies in the face of our understanding of what rights American citizens are entitled to.' Opponents have warned that if not constrained by the courts, Padilla's detention could lead to the military being allowed to hold anyone who, for example, checks out what the government considers the wrong kind of reading materials from the library."
Not long ago, lobbyists would visit politicians and bribe or threaten them until they got what they wanted. Today, ministers lobby the lobbyists. Whenever a big business pressure group holds its annual conference or dinner, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or another senior minister will come and beg it not to persecute the government. George Bush flies around the United States, flattering the companies that might support his re-election, offering tax breaks and subsidies even before the companies ask for them. ...
Both the president and the opposition seem to be offering the armed forces, though they do not appear to have requested it, an ever greater share of the business of government. ...
This is one of the reasons for a military budget that is now entirely detached from any possible strategic reality. As the World Socialist website has pointed out, when you add together the $368bn for routine spending, the $19bn assigned to the department of energy for new nuclear weapons, the $79bn already passed by Congress to fund the war in Iraq and the $87bn that Bush has just requested to sustain it, you find that the US federal government is now spending as much on war as it is on education, public health, housing, employment, pensions, food aid and welfare put together.
... not a single Democrat on the congressional appropriations panel dared to challenge the government's latest request. "
"This itself is a powerful indication that American democracy is dead. With the exception of right-wing talk radio, everyone in America now knows that the invasion of Iraq was based on false information. Yet, 40 percent of the public and both political parties in Congress still support the ongoing war. ...You should read this in its entirety.
Despite overwhelming evidence that the "war on terror" is in fact a war for terror, Republicans still cheer when Bush says we have to "fight them over there" so they don't come "over here." ...
There is an even greater cost of the war – the legal system that protects liberty, a human achievement for which countless numbers of people gave their lives over the centuries. The Bush administration used Sept. 11 to whip up fear and hysteria and to employ these weapons against American liberty. The Orwellian-named PATRIOT Act has destroyed habeas corpus. The executive branch has gained the unaccountable power to detain American citizens on mere suspicion or accusation, without evidence, and to hold Americans indefinitely without a trial.
Foolishly, many Americans believe this power can only be used against terrorists. Americans don't realize that the government can declare anyone to be a terrorist suspect. As no evidence is required, it is entirely up to the government to decide who is a terrorist. Thus, the power is unaccountable. Unaccountable power is the source of tyranny. ...
In the U.S. today nothing stands in the way of the arbitrary exercise of power by government. Federal courts have acquiesced in unconstitutional detention policies. There is no opposition party, and there is no media, merely huge conglomerates or collections of federal broadcasting licenses, the owners of which are afraid to displease the government. ...
The identical cronyism and corrupt government contract practices, by which taxpayers' money is used to reward political contributors, so evident in Iraq is now evident in New Orleans. ...
As Professor Claes Ryn made clear in his book, America the Virtuous, the neoconservatives are neo-Jacobins. There is nothing conservative about them. They are committed to the use of coercion to impose their agenda. Their attitude is merciless toward anyone in their way, whether fellow citizen or foreigner. "You are with us or against us." For those on the receiving end, the Nazi and Jacobin mentalities come to the same thing.
The Bush administration has abandoned American principles. It is a Jacobin regime. Woe to its citizens and the rest of the world."
"When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers. ...
The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his (claimed) constitutional authority to bypass a law."
" 'Why, of course, the people don't want war', Goering shrugged. 'Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.'
'There is one difference,' I pointed out. 'In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.'
'Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.' "
"Is it possible that a few rich men, a small class of men, have persuaded a million men to attack, and attempt to destroy, another million men as poor as they? So that these rich may be richer still?
Terrible thought! How did they persuade these poor men to come to China? By telling them the truth? No, they would never have cone if they had known the truth, Did they dare to tell these workmen that the rich only wanted cheaper raw materials, more markets and more profit? No, they told them that this brutal war was "The Destiny of the Race," it was for the "Glory of the Emperor," it was for the "Honour of the State," it was for their "King and Country." ...
It would seem inescapable that the militarists and the capitalists of Japan are the only class likely to gain by this mass murder, this authorized madness, this sanctified butchery. That ruling class, the true state, stands accused.
Are wars of aggression, wars for the conquest of colonies, then, just big business? Yes, it would seem so, however much the perpetrators of such national crimes seek to hide their true purpose under banners of high-sounding abstractions and ideals. They make war to capture markets by murder; raw materials by rape. They find it cheaper to steal than to exchange; easier to butcher than to buy. This is the secret of war. This is the secret of all wars. Profit. Business. Profit. Blood money.
Behind all stands that terrible, implacable God of Business and Blood, whose name is Profit. Money, like an insatiable Moloch, demands its interest, its return, and will stop at nothing, not even the murder of millions, to satisfy its greed. Behind the army stand the militarists. Behind the militarists stand finance capital and the capitalist. Brothers in blood; companions in crime.
What do these enemies of the human race look like? Do they wear on their foreheads a sign so that they may be told, shunned and condemned as criminals? No. On the contrary. They are the respectable ones. They are honoured. They call themselves, and are called, gentlemen. What a travesty on the name, Gentlemen! They are the pillars of the state, of the church, of society. They support private and public charity out of the excess of their wealth. They endow institutions. In their private lives they are kind and considerate. they obey the law, their law, the law of property. But there is one sign by which these gentle gunmen can be told. Threaten a reduction on the profit of their money and the beast in them awakes with a snarl. They become ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners. Such men as these must perish if the human race is to continue. There can be no permanent peace in the world while they live. Such an organization of human society as permits them to exist must be abolished.
These men make the wounds."