Posted on 07/21/2009 12:55:52 PM PDT by Type Righter
What is a kakistocracy? How about the perfect description of Obambi's regime?
kakistocracy (plural kakistocracies)
1. Government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens.
And from World Wide Words:
KAKISTOCRACY/kækɪˈstɒkrəsɪ/Help with IPA
The government of a state by its most unprincipled citizens.
Writers down the years have found this to be an appropriate word with which to belabour either their political system or other people’s. The American poet James Russell Lowell wrote in a letter in 1876:
What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of democracy? Is ours a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” or a Kakistocracy, rather for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools? The first example we know of is dated 1829, in a book called The Misfortunes of Elphin, written by the English satirical writer Thomas Love Peacock. His sarcasm is ponderous and his language obscure:
They were utterly destitute of the blessings of those “schools for all,” the house of correction, and the treadmill, wherein the autochthonal justice of our agrestic kakistocracy now castigates the heinous sins which were then committed with impunity, of treading on old foot-paths, picking up dead wood, and moving on the face of the earth within sound of the whirr of a partridge.
Autochthonal refers to the indigenous people of a country (from Greek words that mean “sprung from the earth”); Agrestic has the sense of “relating to the country” (Latin ager, a field). Peacock meant by agrestic kakistocracy the English landed squirarchy who kept their tenants in line by severe punishments for offences such as poaching.
The word is Greek, from kakistos, the worst.
You say ‘kakistocracy’, I say ‘cacastocracy’*
*to be sung to the tune of Tomato tomahto....
the song is “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off”
Kakistocracy? Rule by a bunch of KAKS (say it with yr. best Boston accent)
It’d be twice as bad under a Du-kakis-ocracy.
“Just wanted to share...”
I believe Krytocracy is rule by judges, which is also appropriate.
Which is the last step before we become a Banana Republic.
As H.L. Mencken pointed out, politicians aren’t people who are good at running things, they are people who are good at winning elections.
Indeed it is.
But I was posting in a hurry and thought ‘tomato tomahto’ would get the point across.
I guess that’s a “fail” for me.
Thanks everybody for responding!! You’re all right on the “Marx” with your comments!! Keep fighting!! But don’t let them see the whites of your eyes... Make sure they’re crinkled up with laughter as we dump ‘em all in the Potomac.
Oh, the humanity...
:D
Hat tip to TR.
Great word. Goes with ‘let them eat cake.’
Very possible. And it’s the result of underwriting the breeding of inferior stock...millions who would not be born were real economic/social factors brought to bear. Few 13 child, single parent families if actual work had to be done to feed them.
What we have here... is a KAKISTOCRACY.
The government of a state by its most unprincipled citizens.
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