Category

Authoritarianism

• 04.05.10
  Central planning
  Authoritarianism, Books to read, Decentralization (0)

  Fascinating review of Ernest May’s "Strange Victory - Hitler’s Conquest of France", by Alex Harrowell over at A Fistfull of Euros. It turns out that that Hitler's Germany was able to defeat France and Britain because Germany acted more like an egalitarian democracy, while France went in for authoritarian central planning. And then Germany lost the war because, after the first victories, Hitler insisted on tight control and central planning. This story has a sort of tragic duality. The Germans won because they had been able to plan more like a democracy than democratic France or Britain - they constantly ...
  
  
• 03.11.10
  People vs things
  Authoritarianism (0)

  Great quote from George Will. He also tells us about a progressive president who once wanted to apply the same principle to his marriage. Progressives are forever longing to replace the governance of people by the administration of things. Because they are entirely public-spirited, progressives volunteer to be the administrators, and to be as disinterested as the dickens.
  
  
• 02.08.10
  Green Police
  Authoritarianism (0)

  I actually saw a bit of the Super Bowl, toward the end. And I saw that Green Police ad. David Roberts at Grist wonders if it was aimed at teabaggers, but then rejects that idea and thinks it's aimed at people like himself -- self-righteous green moralists? But why does it have to be one or the other? Why couldn't it have been aimed at both, with a different message takeaway message for each of the two opposing groups? Or maybe the takeaway message is that obnoxious greenies should buy Audis and make the ...
  
  
• 11.26.09
  Most extremist administration ever
  Authoritarianism (1)

  No wonder the Obama administration seems to have such a narrow, constrained outlook on life. I got the chart from Say Anything blog, which got it from The EnterpriseBlog, which says it came from a JP Morgan research report. But I like the post at the Say Anything blog because of the comments, especially those about the role of public workers. It seems some people got kind of defensive about it.
  
  
• 10.18.09
  Rise above partisanship? Yuck.
  Authoritarianism, Limits on government power (0)

  The following is what I wrote in response to the Battle Creek Enquirer article, "State to hear B.C.'s voice : Forum gives area residents a say in Michigan's future." I was especially responding to the part that said, "Michael McCullough, general manager and executive editor of the Enquirer, said the goal is to rise above partisanship for the good of the state." Rise above partisanship for the good of the state? Yeck. Sounds way too totalitarian to me. And now I see that John Schwarz is involved. What we need is more partisan bickering, not any "rising above bipartisanship". Partisan bickering is ...
  
  
• 10.10.09
  Most or best work
  Authoritarianism (0)

  Blogger Mark Kleiman makes the case that Barak Obama is the right person to have been given the prize as ”the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” The problem is, there are many other contenders for that honor. To name a few: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Jimmy Carter Hugo Chavez Al Gore Wen Jiabao Kim Jong-il Robert Mugabe Vladimir Putin Than Shwe Manuel Zelaya There is no question that Barak Obama also belongs in that list. But has he really done more than all of those ...
  
  
• 09.11.09
  Pretend to believe
  Authoritarianism (0)

  Toward the end of Alexander Goldfarb's "Death of a Dissident : The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB," Goldfarb reports how after Litvinenko's death, Putin claimed Litvinenko was a small fry and didn't know any secrets; therefore the Russian government would not have ordered his death. (I'm listening to an audio version and don't have the exact quote.) Putin's reasoning is lame, of course. There are lots of other reasons a dictatorship might want to be rid of an expatriate dissident than to keep secrets from getting out. It wasn't ...
  
  
• 05.07.09
  Jacqui Smith’s authoritarianism
  Authoritarianism, Rule of law (0)

  So Great Britain is now banning some people from entering the country on the grounds that they foster extremism or hatred. By that criterion, it could ban any and all members of our Democrat Party from entering their country -- even our president. It's interesting that this came up after an exchange I had in a now-stale thread at The American Scene, where a commenter wrote: Hayek’s thesis is that incremental increases in the power and breadth of the state lead to authoritarianism. We have 50 years’ worth of big-government Western democracies to examine, not one has tended to authoritarianism. My ...