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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Slippery slope nightmares of history
Message-ID: <416@spar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 00:16:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.416
Posted: Mon Jul 29 00:16:30 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 06:12:01 EDT
References: <991@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> <245@ubvax.UUCP> <376@kontron.UUCP>
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
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> > Oh sure there's a slippery slope for anyone who wants to pass prescriptive
> > laws.  Maybe their lust for more prescriptive laws (politicians as
> > capitalists, I guess) will lead to a tightening noose which would
> > someday equal dictatorship.
> > 
> > It's never happened (maybe in Switzerland? :-)).  Dictatorships are
> > established not by politicians following slippery slopes, but rather
> > by coups in times of extreme crisis.  Dictators come as saviors,
> > not as well-meaning limited liberal politicians.  The kind of
> > dictatorship that mike fears has never happened. 
>  
> Hitler and Mussolini came to power by election, not by coup.  While
> Hitler had no good intentions, I suspect Mussolini may have, but evil
> tends to build on its self.
>
>				Clayton Cramer

We seem to have uncovered a vein of libertarian mythology here.  No
sooner have I had to correct <mike on Hitler's accession to power
than Clayton chimes in to add Mussolini to their pantheon (or pandemonium)
of democratically elected dictators.  Just in case any of you might take 
Clayton seriously out there, I'd like to briefly lay out some historical
facts of the matter.  The Fascists managed to win only 35 out of 535
seats in the Chamber of Deputies in the election of 1921.  Mussolini
seized power the following year by mobilizing his Fascist militias in 
his "March on Rome", openly challenging the authority of the weak 
coalition government and threatening to lay siege to the capital in the 
name of restoring social order.  The King caved in and asked Mussolini 
to form a government, rather than risk civil war.

All tyrants want constitutional legitimacy.  Both Hitler and Mussolini
managed to secure something like it; in Hitler's case by duping larger
parties into thinking they could co-opt his movement, and in Mussolini's
case by a (seemingly) viable blackmail threat of insurrection.  Neither 
of them were elected to power.

					Baba