09 February 2005 Blog Home : February 2005 : Permalink
Both Tim Worstall and The Daily Ablution critique a Grauniad column by AL Kennedy (OTOH I bet that Maureen Dowd is gnashing her teeth in envy since it reads just like a MoDo piece) which is so full of falsehoods and innuendoes as to be pointless save as a further example of how moonbats delude themselves. Just as an example, apparently in order to be "genuinely elected" you need to receive the votes from "a majority of the American people", something that has probably eluded every single preseident of the country - and for that matter eluded practically every single leader of every country that permits abstentions and has multiple candidates.
But enough of Ms Kennedy, as The Daily Ablution's Scott Burgess points out she leads one to look at the work of Robert F Kennedy Jnr which makes me wonder whether whatever part of Ireland Kennedys hail from has a genetic problem that leads to abnormally low logical reasoning ability. But no that seems improbable, surely it is a coincidence that in the last 50 years or so all politicians, journalists and activists called Kennedy all seem to be barking moonbats?
As Scott points out, RFK Jr, as well as performing a Ward Churchill-like revision of historical events by mixing the Hudson River with the Cuyahoga River, also manages to have a curious dictionary that has a different definition of fascism to other editions of the same dictionary:
In the book, Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House has learned key lessons from the Nazis.
"While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business," he writes. "My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as 'a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.' Sound familiar?"
The online AHD defines fascism rather differently but I think that there is a bigger point to be made here. That point is most excellently made by Miguel Centellas:
We often overestimate the power of the president. Unlike presidents in, say, Latin America, the US president has very little power. By that, I mean that the US president has a lot of power in the world because he's the US president. But he has very little power, vis à vis the legislature (or the courts), when compared to other presidents around the world (one of the world's strongest presidents is the French). And most prime ministers are stronger (as executive), vis à vis their legislatures, than most presidents.
The US president doesn't have the power to disband the legislature. Or the power to call for early elections. He has no special prerogative over certain areas of legislation (e.g. many presidents have direct power over macro-economic matters, which are no longer in the hands of the legislature at all). Even over the military, where he exercises the most power, Congressional oversight is extensive, as is the fact that, while the president can order the military to do pretty much anything (except go to war) w/o immediate legislative approval, the military's budget is entirely in the hands of Congress. In short, the president is pretty much restricted to signing or vetoing whatever legislation Congress puts on his desk.
This is, it seems to me, precisely what the liberal moonbats are failing to understand. Unlike the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc. the US presidency is astoundingly powerless. Even if one ignores the obvious things, like the way that Senators Boxer and Kerry are still walking around freely despite their criticism of Bush and Rice, the fact that the Supreme Court fails to consistently take the line of the executive and the way that even the currently Republican dominated congress is failing to slavishly pass the legislation and budgets that the executive wants are clear signs that the USA is not under the grip of a Fascist dictator. Moreover it is also clear that there is no trend in that direction. As Miguel also points out, US political parties are not exactly disciplined machines (mind you I think he's wrong when he writes that European ones are ideologically consistent - some are, some aren't). Influential Republicans and Republican sympathisers hold a wide range of views (think Rush Limburg and John McCain) as do Democrats (Lieberman vs Dean) and pundits criticise members of their own party as much as they do ones on the other side.
Indeed the idea that business controls the Republicans (or the Democrats for that matter) is laughable.Some businesses get some benefits from various rules and regulations, others suffer. Even though Bush has shown a lamentable weakness in swallowing the protectionist line now and again, neither this nor any other business lobby has managed to capture the reins of power, perhaps partly because "Business" as a bloc just doesn't exist. Trying to get business leaders from different companies and industry to agree is like herding cats. Heck even within industries where you might think there would be solidarity (say aerospace or defence) there isn't