Cppertop: Hindenberg reluctantly appointed Hitler Chancellor. He was not required to do so, but he did. So that made Hitler "elected" in roughly the same way that the U.S. Secretary of State is "elected." And then Hitler, using assassination and a bunch of other completely illegal means, destroyed Germany’s democracy and seized absolute power. It is ridiculous, in my view, to take all that and try to mangle it into "Hitler was democratically elected."

The German people did indeed want change, but, when faced with a choice, they did not choose Hitler. Hitler lost at the polls, and more than once. Indeed, for a while when he was first in power he even tried a plebescite or two to get his agenda through, and those lost as well. His ONLY way to get his agenda completely through was by killing or imprisoning his political opponents, destroying all democratic mechanisms that remained, and instituting an absolute reign of terror. It is simply historically and technically incorrect to suggest that any of this amounts to his being "democratically elected."

Technically, our president is elected by elected representatives, not by the people. Sometimes the electors elect someone who didn’t get even a plurality of the votes. Does that mean that our president isn’t democratically elected? Technically, of course, it does. Our democracy was surprisingly un-democratic in its founding, with the only part of our government directly elected being state legislatures and the house of representatives.

There’s no such thing as true democracy in major governments on this planet, so if we’re going to use the word at all, we have to be imprecise and generous. And John Roberts is much closer to an elected official than he is to a despot, the head of a military coup, a hereditary monarch, or any of the other distinctly un-democratic method of selecting people for office.

Here’s a criteria for democratically elected: if there were a person for whom 75% of the population eligible to vote want the person out of office and that super-majority has the legal right to make it happen (in a reasonable time-frame) through non-violent means, the official is democratically elected.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.

“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”

Well. Broun seems to be clumsily attempting to draw a comparison between despotism and the creation of "National Police."

What is wrong with that? Seriously? What is wrong with drawing a negative comparison to an attempt to the create a National Police Force in the United States?

Broun may be an asshole for 100 other reasons, but it’s not Broun’s fault the comparison he makes has faces. It’s not Broun’s fault the faces belong to Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il… and, um, Barack Obama.

The only thing Obama shares with Hitler is they have a similar effect on crowds.

There is a much stronger argument Obama is Neo-Stalinist. Stalin cared nothing of doctrine; the point was to exploit or otherwise contrive whatever doctrine or idiocy that could be concocted that would perpetuate and increase control and power over populations to be ruled. Beria ensured it. Stalin was the most successful and the purest form of the Authoritarian Totalitarians who ruled in the 20th Century.

We find this same "doctrinal liquidity" dominates the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the political cultures of Detroit and Chicago. They use the same cliche’s and harangues ad infinitum,  but their rules are always changing to deflect blame and responsibility. The recent Fannie Mae scandal is a case in point. Gross criminal negligence, wholesale breaches of fiduciary duty, obfeasance and malfeasance. And Congressional investigations in a Democrat Congress… only to protect the appointments of some those guilty parties to Obama’s cabinet.

The greatest threat to our nation resides in the depth of negligence, indolence and duplicity which have become normalized in our present political culture.

This is starkly captured in a "sleeper" lawsuit which has wound its way through the New Jersey court system and now sits before SCOTUS. From the link below, select “Supreme Court case” on the upper left of the page.

Hillary may yet be inaugurated president come January 2009.

http://www.blogtext.org/naturalborncitizen/topic/8700.html  

But this ‘devil in the details’ discussion misses the broader point: abuse of power via ‘other’ security forces than what the U.S. of A. has traditionally relied upon.

That’s the analogy to what some perceive as Obama’s ‘radical’ proposal. (insert Santayana quote here)

So, call upon Godwin to save us all,  and rip Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) a new one, because Lord knows the Lefties have never compared Bush to Hitler.

Not to bash Germans and Europeans (I have German Ancestors), but Germans at that time (and still today) were bred to follow authority.  Back then it produced Hitler.  Americans, OTOH, respect authority to a point, at some point Americans will just get fed up and, oh I don’t know, vote the offending person/party out of power (sound familiar?).  Take that ability away from us (which would allow a Hitler) and things will get messy.

Was the President of Germany an elected official at the time?

Was that appointment within the President of Germany’s constitutionally-defined powers?

If yes to both questions then Hitler’s acension to power was just as democratic as the appointment of Senators in the United States prior to the 17th amendment.

A position is democratic even if voters do not directly elect people to it, as long as there are voters downstream. I agree that more than obe level away from teh people – example, if the voters elected a legslature, the legislature elected a President, and the President appointed a Chancellor – is diluting the acountability tremendously, but its still democracy because if the people dont like it they can punish the legislature the next cycle. In the US, the Electoral College appoints the President, so teh President is technically two levels away from democratic accountability, but the threat of that accountability is what keeps the Electors in line, voting for teh winner of their districts rather than their own judgement.

A system (like weimar germany) may be weak  in that sense, but thats a flaw of the democratic system in place, not a flaw of democracy in general, nor evidence for democracy’s absence.  There are and have been ZERO pure democracies (where every single official is elected) in world history. What we really have are Republics that are founded on Democratic principles.