It helps to read a post you're responding to.
Originally Posted by see above
Ehhh except for the fact that in order to stay in power in a democracy you need to 1) follow the law (otherwise there's no substantive rule of law upheld in the first place, see OP), which severely limits your powers compared to an autocrat. Much easier to keep everyone happy if you have access to illegal funding and other illegal means. 2) by definition, it's harder to keep 51% of the population happy (while upholding the rule of law) than to keep the army+your cronies+only a basic level of "neutrality" from the people.One can argue that an autocrat is perhaps even more at the whims of the people if he imposes tyranny than an elected official is. The elected official has the legitimacy of the people (as Jom pointed out) whereas an autocrat does not necessarily. An autocrat needs to keep his cronies, his army, his people all semi-pacified and if he becomes a tyrant then he runs the very high risk of being killed by his cronies, the army or the people.
This is basic stuff, just look at every (real, liberal, representative) democracy and at every dictatorship in recent times and compare how long the rulers were in power for. NK, Russia, Libya, Egypt...
How? There were no (legitimate) elections. Prove it. And no, not rising up against a system of the Gestapo and SS is NOT proof of support/legitimacy.Hitler held legitimacy until the end.
Not true at all. How else do you explain that in most democracies, most rulers tend to get kicked out after 1-2 terms (exception: US due to the presidential term limit)?The people that voted for you tend to maintain ties and identify with their choice. They internalize this relationship and support to the end.
Err I'm talking about a democracy that upholds the (substantive) rule of law. Read the OP for once!How quickly did Morsi rise via democracy and how quickly did he begin imposing his form of tyranny? He had to be overthrown via a coup. There was blood, there was upheaval, there was international outcry. Egypt is basically back where it was under Morsi just from the opposite POV. Still a tyranny no? Just that it took a coup which was clearly harder to do and drew more ire than Morsi winning an election. What about Al-Maliki? Same thing. Only a revolution in the Sunni parts of the country got him removed but the whole time he was an autocratic tyrant who had the legitimacy of the masses (voters) backing him. A lot easier than what ISIS is trying to pull.
Using failed states that don't follow the rule of law in the first place proves nothing. Democracy serves to *uphold* the rule of law but it cannot create something from nothing.
Once again, you are stating that democracies *can* fail. Great, nobody has ever disagreed with that. Now prove that democracies are the "easiest" road to tyranny.I cited Cromwell, Napoleon III, Mussolini and Hitler earlier. You ignored those examples. All 4 of those men used democracy to generate their power and grant them legitimacy. Very easy for them to take power and they usually held it for much longer. The Western Hemisphere is littered with strongmen who grabbed power through force only to survive a short while.
Not really. Latching onto someone else's posts does not give your own views more credibility.Really I'm just parroting Jom now.
As long as there *is* democracy.Democracy gives legitimacy.
Tyrant and legitimacy are mutually exclusive. Even if a tyrant appears to have public support (see Putin's autocracy) it means little due to the lack of any independent means of information etc. It's like saying that a child who was brought up into the Catholic faith and never learned about anything else and then turns out to be a devout Christian is proof of the validity of Christianity.Even if they're supporting a tyrant, it still looks legitimate which makes it easier not only to get power but to maintain it.
Read the thread. Weimar as a system lacked proper legal safeguards, s above.You understand this. You understand Hitler's rise. You shrug this off by stating that those people were "stupid". How deep.
Strawman. Noise.Still you wish to maintain that everything that isn't a democracy is a tyranny and therefore is already the easiest path to tyranny. So the path is a path. Just wow. I'm not even trying to get that deep here, but if this is your maximum depth then....... jeez.
Hence "substantive rule of law", which includes everything that you stated here.
I think part of the problem here is simply that I'm using terminology which apparently isn't that commonly known.
To summarise it very briefly, the substantive rule of law basically includes the sum of all individual human rights, "judicial rights" (fair trial and so on.) etc. in addition to a formally functioning (court et al) system.