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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (64534)	6/2/2005 5:20:33 PM
From: Gib Bogle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

"Americans have the best politicians money can buy!" Maurice, this statement rather undercuts the first part of your post. The ideal of democracy is "one man, one vote", i.e. political power is equally distributed. The reality of "democracy" is that political power is proportional to wealth, as your saying suggests. (I'm not implying that I think it could ever be different.) If we think back to time when the Athenians introduced this system, we can remind ourselves that voting power rested with only a fraction of the people, the wealthy males, and the rest of the population had no vote at all. Gib

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (64534)	6/2/2005 7:42:42 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 74559

Re: Germans voted for Adolf Hitler and look where that took them. You don't recall history correctly. Hitler was the leader of a minority party when he forced himself on the Hindenberg government as Reichschancellor. As soon as he'd achieved this status, the Nazis fire-torched the Reichstag and started to impose the Party's draconian policies, by murder among other means, on a nation that never did vote in a Nazi majority. Here's some of this history: homepage.eircom.net <COPY> In 1932, with Germany close to anarchy, Hitler's career approached its crisis. He narrowly lost to the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg in the presidential elections in April, and the Nazis polled their highest vote (37.2%) in the July elections. In the November elections, however, the Nazi vote decreased to 33.1%. Hitler had lost prestige through his stubborn insistence on "total power; the party was psychologically and financially exhausted; and the depression was beginning to wane. At this moment, a conservative group led by former Chancellor Franz von Papen arranged for Hitler to enter the government. On Jan. 30, 1933, the aged President Hindenburg appointed him chancellor in a coalition government with the conservatives. The conservatives deluded themselves in thinking they could use Hitler for their own interests. Within four months, Hitler had dramatically established his mastery over them and over all other political groups. He had destroyed the Communist and Socialist parties and the labor unions; forced the bourgeois and right wing parties to dissolve; emasculated or destroyed the paramilitary organizations; eliminated the federal structure of the republic; and on March 23, 1933, won from a decimated and intimidated Reichstag an enabling law that gave him dictatorial powers. His success came from a combination of pseudo-democratic mass demonstrations; terror by the SA and the Nazi-controlled police, which accelerated after the Reichstag fire in February; and a seemingly conservative program that kept the conservatives quiescent. Consolidation of Power In early 1934, however, he faced new conflicts, mainly from within the party. The SA, still led by Roehm, and the Nazi left vigorously opposed his alliance with business and military leaders, and a group of monarchists was campaigning for a restoration of the monarchy. Hindenburg's deteriorating health raised the question of his succession. Hitler survived the crisis by adopting the most radical methods. He rallied behind himself the party leaders, the army, and Himmler 's SS (the Schutzstaffel, or Blackshirts), and on June 30, 1934, he struck. A number of SA leaders, monarchists, and other opponents were murdered; the influence of the SA was drastically reduced; and Hitler emerged as the undisputed master of Germany. When Hindenburg died on August 2, Hitler officially assumed the title of Fuhrer, or supreme head of Germany. <END COPY>