Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site kontron.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!voder!kontron!cramer
From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: On Democracy:re to Lewis on History
Message-ID: <548@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Mar-86 18:35:44 EST
Article-I.D.: kontron.548
Posted: Sat Mar  1 18:35:44 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 20:59:02 EST
References: <1234@decwrl.DEC.COM> <554@whuts.UUCP> <532@kontron.UUCP> <265@garth.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
Lines: 68

> In article <532@kontron.UUCP> cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> >  1. Election of Adolph Hitler in freer and more democratic elections than
> >     the United States had at the time.
> 
> Clayton, it seems, has both a distorted view of history and a short memory.
> I will partly excerpt from my responses the last time he posted this nonsense.
> 
> Hitler had already been appointed chancellor before the 1933 election took
> place.  State radio was used for Nazi propaganda in that campaign, and police 
> were forbidden to interfere with the Nazi SA's suppression of opposition 
> gatherings and newspapers.  This is freer and more democratic than the US
> in 1933?  How so?
> 

Baba, it seems, has a short memory and knows little history.  There are two
significant elections in 1933 Germany.  The first one, where the Nazis won
42% of the vote, and their coalition partners 6%.  The second election, after
Hitler was appointed chancellor.  The first election (really the important
one, since it provided the basis for Hitler to be appointed Chancellor), 
was freer and more democratic than American elections of 1932 for the
following reasons:

  1. Jews and other minorities were allowed to vote.  The sort of abuses
     of voting rights common throughout the South at the time did not 
     happen in Germany in the first election, at least on the scale they
     happened in the South.
     
  2. Voting age in Germany was 18.  Voting age in most states in America
     was 21.
     
  3. A MUCH larger percentage of the eligible voters voted in the first
     German election of 1933 than ANY national election in American
     history.  Over 70% of the population voted in Germany in the first
     election.

The second election was, of course, much less democratic.  It was a 
travesty, because the first election, which was free and democratic, 
put into power someone quite willing to subvert freedom.

For more detail, read _Rise_And_Fall_of_the_Third_Reich by William
Shirer, _Arms_of_Krupp_ by William Manchester, or most any other
history of Nazi Germany.

Baba knows this.  We discussed it in great detail some months back.
It's just easier to deny the facts than admit that democracies make
mistakes -- sometimes tragic ones.

> >  2. Formation of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini in 1922 after
> >     getting more seats in the Parliament than any other party.
> 
> Out of 535 seats in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (Parliament), the Fascists
> won 35 seats.  For comparison, the Socialists won 123 and the Populists won
> 108.  Three coalition governments were formed between the election of May, 1921
> and the Fascist uprising in October, 1922 that resulted in Mussolini's being
> allowed to form a government, his price for not besieging Rome.
> 
> 					Baba

The books *I* have read, including a survey of Italian history published
by the U.S. State Department I read several years back says that the 
Fascists had more seats than any other party in the Parliament, and 
that's why the King asked Mussolini to form a government.  The March on 
Rome happened, according to what I've read, AFTER Mussolini formed a
government.

What are your sources?  I would be curious to hear that the U.S. State
Department would publish a thoroughly false history of the rise of
Fascist Italy in one of their Area Handbook series.