Two more Russian cities abolish mayoral elections as Kremlin further centralizes power

Moscow Times ^ | Feb 8 2019

[billakay]

...when you now express views that are anti-conservative, particularly against the Electoral College...

I think maybe you've misunderstood the point I was trying to make. I am actually a huge supporter of the Electoral College, and if you let me, would repeal the 17th Amendment, reverting election to senators back to the state legislators. I am well aware of the downsides of pure democracy (mob rule), and don't espouse it in any way.

That being said, even though you have a good understanding of this concept, you seem to have fallen into the same trap the left seems to use against us, and that is: automatically assuming that if something is "less democratic" it is inherently bad.

Suppose now, that there is an alternative way to select a particular official in your Constitution and basic law, and this power is available to the President. Now, lets further suppose that said President not only enjoys the popular support of the people, but has been repeatedly been re-elected by the same people (under the same Constitution). Under this supposition, why is it somehow evil for this President to utilize a particular Constitutional power of his office in a situation that he feels calls for it? (Not to mention the fact that he has shown in the past his willingness to use this power judiciously and temporarily to solve a particular problem).

If the action was somehow an arbitrary use of power, unsupported by the Constitution and laws, then I would wholeheartedly agree with you, but this is simply not the case here.

I think the most important quality in a conservative...really, in any thinking man...is consistency of reasoning and thought. If you do indeed believe in the concept of self-determination, and in the idea of a Constitutional republic, you cannot then throw these ideas right out the window just because it is Vladimir Putin who happens to be wielding that Constitutional power. Like I said in a previous post, this is no different than simply asserting "Orange Man Bad" as a reason Trump should not be able to wield his Constitutionally delegated power.

[Olog-hai]

The left is a big champion of “self-determination” when it leads them to power. So, I prefer the moral virtues instead, as did the Founding Fathers who never used the aforementioned term. (And yes, I am aware that the phrase appears in the preamble of the current Russian constitution, which reads like a United Nations and/or European Union document, which in turn were inspired by the USSR’s constitutions.)

And actually, when it comes to the notion of things being “democratic”, I regard that word as a remarkable evil, given who are the champions of that word:

What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. […] Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat.

— The Principles of Communism (Engels)

[I]t is very clear that in fundamental theory, socialism and democracy are almost, if not quite, one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals.

— Woodrow Wilson, “Socialism and Democracy”

There is a big reason why the Founding Fathers eschewed that word too, and why the embrace of that word and idea has led us down dark paths. But JFTR, this is Article 1 Section 1 of Russia’s current constitution:

Russia is a democratic federal rule-of-law state with the republican form of government.

The contradiction appears right in the beginning. (And if Wilson was not being facetious, and I do not believe he was, the socialism too.)

I find Article 7 Section 1 troubling too:

The Russian Federation is a social state, whose policies are aimed at creating conditions which ensure dignified life and free development of the human being.

That reads too much like the last paragraph of the Communist Manifesto’s second chapter, where Marx envisioned the communist state in its ultimate form as “an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”. And while this constitution’s English version has the word “freedom” 43 times, not once does it have the word “liberty”. (And there is no equivalent to the Second Amendment; nor do so-called “negative liberties”, which stipulate what the government can never do to you, appear.)