paul bullock wrote:
> Dave Z says 'allowing officials'... etc
>
> Gerry has already shown that curtailing the rights of voters to
> reelect a President, is rare, and relatively recent in the USA. ie
> used to prevent another FDR by the Republicans/establishment in 1952
> once re-established. Secondly no one is 'allowing' anyone to do
> anything, rather, the voters are requiring actions from the elected.
> The abolition of the two term limit is presented by the enemies of
> democracy as the removal of some sensible constraint upon individual
> megalomania, rather than the extension of rights to the electorate.
> Indeed it treats the electorate as an unreliable passive amorphous
> manipulated mass without any hope or political capacity.
There is a more general issue here Paul.
Popular movements have historically often relied upon strong leaders :
Ceasar, Cromwell, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, Castro etc.
The death of the strong leader has often posed major problems for the
survival of the revolutionary project, and even where the state
survived that, as in the USSR and China, the concentration of great
power in one leader means that subsequent leaders were in a position to
radically change direction.
Leaders like Solon or Washington who were willing to step back, left
more lasting revolutionary legacies.
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Received on Wed Feb 25 07:20:36 2009
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