George Lucas to TIME: "All democracies turn into dictatorships..."

Av: So I may categorize your theory as one that is all greed driven? You will allow no room for theory that is fear driven?

semper:

They crave power (greed) but inflict fear on their opponents.

They at the top believe themselves to be just and moral men!

Even though those who have felt their boot know them as cruel, immoral, selfish and greedy.

It's the unusual man who has no fear, no matter how high. And you are attributing this to more than one. While I admit it may be possible, I would think that (at the least) they have the fear that they will fail in challenging God, not to mention they must fear each other. Please provide some proof for your assertion that they have no fear.
They believe themselves to be just and moral? How do you know what they believe?
Can you demonstrate how they successfully delude themselves and their followers that they are just and moral but are not?
What form of morality is this? What form of justice?
Please expand your boot from metaphor to specific feet and specific history and show how they made it appear moral.

Oi.

When are people [including some Freepers] gonna stop lending credence or pay attention to the political ramblings of people in Hollywood?

The guy is a friggin movie maker!

I do not care about his pontifications.

I have not read that book yet, but he seems right on the money. Thanks. I will have to check it out

Festa

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

John Adams

“That is why a founders rejected direct democracy and instead created a Constitutional Republic.”

Well, most of our founding fathers, anyways. Unfortunately, there were some who were all too eager for a direct democracy of the sort the French Revolution promoted, which included Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin (certainly, he was practically in love with Voltaire, who was one of the fathers of the French Revolution with his venomous writing style that left many of us Catholics massacred), and, heck, even Thomas Jefferson (that guy actually went as far as to write a letter praising the Jacobins for their excesses in the defense of “liberty”, which is called the Adam and Eve Letter.).

But yeah, I agree, Democracy’s pretty much a dictatorship. Heck, it’s even WORSE than a dictatorship, it’s closer to anarchy, especially a nihilistic dog-eat-dog world. Just look at France post-Revolution and you’ll see what I mean.

And Lucas’ examples are also extremely poor examples of a dictatorship being elected. As others have pointed out, Caesar was never elected by the people at all, he was elected by the Senate, and even THERE, he had to bring the military over to force the senate to grant him power. And with Cromwell, he only got power after a coup against the king and parliament (which definitely wasn’t a democracy either, since none of the people there were even elected by the people). Napoleon took over after the coup, and even then, I’d argue that in his case, democracy becoming a dictatorship was arguably a very GOOD thing considering that the democracy there was FAR worse (let’s put it this way, the populace celebrated their freedom and newfound democracy upon unlawfully killing Louis XVI by essentially committing gang wars and having sadistic revel in slaughtering people in various painful ways just for fun. The French Revolution is in fact the main reason I utterly hate democracy). Probably the only example Lucas gave that actually came CLOSE to being democracy being made into a dictatorship via votes was Hitler, since he was technically voted into office. Even there, he was merely appointed to chancellorship, and there’s evidence to suggest Hitler only won the “election” due to what was essentially ballot-stuffing. And for the record, like France, Germany essentially because a site of gang wars between the National Socialists and the Communists even before Hitler came to power thanks to Woodrow Wilson’s stupid insistence to make all of Europe democracies.

And to be honest, try as I might, I could not find any evidence to Palpatine, say, trying to stuff the ballot box, not even in the Expanded Universe (both the old one and the new one). A would-be dictator would ALWAYS resort to stuffing ballot boxes to ensure they get elected or get their agenda pushed, no exceptions. It happened with the Communist party in practically every country but the USSR (though even there it’s iffy. I believe it was Stalin who said that it doesn’t matter who votes, but who counts the votes). It happened in Nazi Germany, it happened during the French Revolution when they decided to kill King Louis XVI via a vote. Heck, it even happened multiple times within our own country of America (really, just look at ACORN and how they got Obama elected, or even the questionable results within the 2012 elections, where there were more votes in a city than the total population in said city going for Obama.).

Then again, what can I say about Lucas, this is the same guy who labeled himself a 1960s-style liberal in this article and others, meaning he’s more likely to think of democracy in terms of the kind of participatory democracy that the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and the SDS, Weathermen Underground, and OWS thought regarding participatory democracy (ie, causing riots on the streets), not the general election process.

Which is why the United States was never intended to be a democracy. A Constitutional Republic using democratic principles is far different then saying the United States is a Democracy

BTW, that reminds me, can you post a source claiming that the elections for Hitler were rigged? I might need it for source material for someone.