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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Snow Job

From Dean Esmay:

Resolved: Condoleezza Rice was democratically elected as United States Secretary of State.

It’s a false dilemna fallacy (an “apples to oranges"comparison).

Dean raises the point to define his statement that Hitler was not democratically elected, because it was a parliamentary system, not a plebescite for Hitler.

False.

The appropriate question to test Dean’s theory would be to say:

Resolved: Winston Churchill was democratically elected as Prime Minister of Britain.

Substitute Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair for Winston Churchill, and you have the same question.

Secretary of State is an appointment.  Since we are not a democracy (we are a Representive Republic), none of our Presidents are “democratically elected” by The People, and other cabinet positions and posts are appointed by our Representatives.  Our President is “democratically elected” by the electors (in the Electoral College), who (in some states) are a winner-take-all, not apportioned by popular vote.

Hitler was head of his Party, in exactly the way that Tony Blair or Winston Churchill were.  A vote for his Party, was a vote for him, albeit indirectly… but indirectly is relative to the office, the understanding of who is head of that party, and the way that majorities determine the winner.

When the British got rid of Churchill, they voted for another party, but the end result was a “no” vote for Churchill.

From Wikipedia:

The Nazi party lost 34 seats in the November 1932 election but remained the Reichstag’s largest party.The most shocking move of the early election campaign was to send the SA to support a Rotfront action against the transport agency and in support of a strike.

After chancellor Papen left office, he secretly told Hitler that he still held considerable sway with president Hindenburg and that he would make Hitler chancellor as long as he, Papen, could be the vice chancellor. On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of a coalition government of the NSDAP-DNVP-Centre Party. The SA and SS led torchlight parades throughout Berlin. In the coalition government three members of the cabinet were Nazis: Hitler, Wilhelm Frick (Minister of the Interior) and Hermann Göring (Minister Without Portfolio).

From Scholastic:

On the evening of Jan. 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, the newly appointed Chancellor of Germany, stood in a government building at an open window watching a torchlight parade of 25,000 Nazi troops march through the streets of Berlin. Thousands of Germans cheered as they marched by, and Hitler was giddy with delight. “No power on Earth will get me out of here alive,” someone heard him say.

Earlier that day, the President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, had appointed Hitler Chancellor (similar to Prime Minister). Having won more than than 37 percent of the vote in the previous year’s legislative elections, Hitler’s Nazi party had enough power to effectively paralyze Germany’s democratic government, which had been in place since 1919. Hindenburg hoped that by appointing Hitler, he could satisfy Nazi legislators and break the deadlock, while maintaining control of the government behind the scenes.

To suggest that “Hitler wasn’t democratically elected” is say that the Reichstag didn’t have a majority in a parliamentary system.  Had that party NOT been the majority, he would not have been “appointed.”

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