Re: [FT] UNSC (emotional rant)

"Parrott, Charles P" wrote:

> Funny thing is, most totalitarian or authoritarian governments don't
start out that way.  They start as benevolent democracies, republics or
monarchies that slowly erode citizen rights and freedoms until it's too
late.
>

Totalitarian or authoritarian regimes form suddenly, because the
previous form of government has obviously failed, and the would-be
dictator has "The Answer".

Yes, Hitler won a fair election.  The election was fair because the Nazi
thugs that beat up and intimidated voters were no more (or less) brutal
than the thugs of any of the other party, and then Hitler managed to
disband or defang all of the groups of thugs (including the
brownshirts).

The global depression after the crash of 1929 is hard to imagine for
those of us who are fortunate enough to have not experienced it.  The
western parliamentary democracies were able to weather the storm, as
they were long established, but the nascent democracies had insufficient
time to convince their electorates that they had the best answer in the
long run.

The Soviet regime came into power suddenly because the Czar, while a
saintly man and benevolent father, was never expected to assume the
throne and was completely unschooled in statecraft.  He could not choose
good advisors, and his government was incapable of keeping even the
nation's capital well fed.