[TheDogWho]

This is a political debate.
You can say that dictatorships are bad because there is no fairness in the running of the country and the country is run by fear, with censorship and, sometimes, indoctrination (brainwashing in layman's terms).
However, dictatorships are usually efficient and effective although they are unfair to the public.
What do you think?

[TobiasMar]

Dictatorships are just wrong IMO. I especially don't like the way the leaders rule and the huge lack of freedom.

[Elliott]

It all depends on the dictator.
If the dictator has the right ideas, and is genuinly wanting to help and further his nation, then that can be ok. But they can never work, because there will always be people in that nation against the dictatorship.

[Illidan]

Has anyone noticed that the concept of God is also a similar concept to dictatorship?

[Elliott]

Never. God gives everyone freedom, Dicatotors don't. The 2 are completely different. Why do you say that?

[Illidan]

Because God has the opportunity to take free will away, he just chooses not to. Get it?

[Elliott]

Its the fact that he chooses not to that makes God and Dictatorships so different. They are very much apart Illidian.

[Illidan]

If you're talking about dictatorship in a bad way then yes. But generally it is, because being a dictator does not automatically mean that the decisions chosen are bad.

[Ravenblade]

But then can anyone think of any Dictators who weren't bad? Generally they get to power by underhands means and they run the country very firmly in order to stay in that power. They don't give the choice to follow them or not, you just have to. In North Korea, their dictator (forgot the name - sorry) is revered almost like he IS some kind of god.

[I'm Always BROKE]

Dictators! OMG! I hate those guys!! They just rule the country and everybody must listen to them or they will be killed. BAD!!!

[Ivan is my name]

Hitler. All I have to say. He has given me my bad impression of dicatators. I HATE him

[TobiasMar]

Hitler and Stalin were definately the worst dictators, but there are good dictators too. Not ALL dictatorships are so bad, like Agatio stated in the 3rd post of the topic. Just because some dictators are bad guys, doesn't mean all of them are better, though freedom would be far better.

[Ravenblade]

Hitler did some very good things aswell though - he totally revitalised the German economy and cut down enemployment massivley. He saved a lot of German people from poverty, thus providing a case to say that some elementts of dictatorships are right.

[TobiasMar]

Ravenblade, on Feb 19 2005, 02:10 PM, said:

Hitler did some very good things aswell though - he totally revitalised the German economy and cut down enemployment massivley. He saved a lot of German people from poverty, thus providing a case to say that some elementts of dictatorships are right.

He never did ANYTHING good. He saved is own people by attacking other countries to occupy them, taking away the country's goods, therefore putting more people into poverty than people being released from poverty. <.<

[Golden Djinn13]

But because of Dictators like Hitler, it changed the way people look at Dictators, and I think that Dictators have way to much power, not even the president can do stuff like Dictators.

[Ravenblade]

Gimli do your research - he got people off the streets by building Autobahns (motorways) and recruiting them for the army and such. He did a lot to help the German people before the war had even started!

[Golden Djinn13]

Hitler was insane!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He had no right to invade Poland and all those other countries.

[Nonsensical]

Sometimes the good the dictators do is overshadowed by the bad. Many dictators united their countries.

I'd like to point out that the United States and other countries have even backed dictators.

[Ravenblade]

@GD13:Look, that had little to do with him being a dictator as such. We need to keep focused on the internal issues. That means stuff he did within his own country. Invading another country for stupid reasons still happens *cough!!* and doesnt mean the country is run by a dictator.

Nonsensical - i agree totally. Peoples perceptions of them are warped by global politics.

[Nonsensical]

Dictators come from political parties. Most of the political parties didn't start out as wanting to kill millions of people or start wars. Take communism. In theory isn't bad. It wants to help people. Put into practice it wasn't all that great, but there were good intentions. And they did help stablize governments.

You can't be so closed minded about something.Get your facts striaght first. They did good things and they did bad things. Most of the time the bad out weighted the good, but you can't just write off the good.

[Golden Djinn13]

Communism may not sound bad, but look at Cuba for example. Before Communism, Cuba was a paradise, but when Communism came about, It all went down hill.

[Ravenblade]

But Communism is not the same as "dictator" is it? In Russia, they had Gorbachev, the last premier of the Soviet Union (i think x.x;:D. He was a dictator and was a great man - he ended the Cold War! Of course no one gives him credit because eveyrone likes to think that "the west won". He used his power to try and help the russian people who couldnt afford to keep up the cold war.

[Nonsensical]

Dictators can come out of communism, fascism, monarchies, etc. My point is that the government idea started out as wanting to help, the dictator that came out of said government had good intentions, he even helped his country in some way, then he went down the wrong path, killed people, died. You can't say that every single thing he did was evil. That his only thought was on murder.

Even Hitler in his own way was trying to help people. Obviously he was wrong as we all know, but he was trying to make his perfect race. His perfect German race. He was trying to help his people out. He was insane yes, his logic twisted in a demented way, but he wasn't completely evil.

[Ravenblade]

I agree NS, Hitler wasn't totally evil, just very confused. In truth, you could argue that as power corrupts, none of the dictators who came to power with good intentions were evil. Take Mao Zedong (Famous Chinese Dictator), he wanted to revolutionise government so that it would be fairer to the peasantfolk. He got carried away in the end and created a totalitarian state, but he did start off with good intentions.

[Alex]

I really don't like dictatorship. The leaders can just do whatever they choose. ^_^ Yay for democracy.

[Nonsensical]

Ravenblade: I was actually going to use Mao Zedong as an example, but I didn't know all that much about him.

Alex: I don't either. I think that's too much power for one person, but there's always more that one side to things.

[Andross]

Holy crap, get your facts straight people.

Out of all the dictators in modern history, which probably is 100+, I think only one or two have done any good. The main guy would be the former dictator of Portugal, and the nation got an infrastructure, decent education, and increased economic gains. The guy, Antonio de Olivier Salazar, still repressed free speech though.

Next up, Hitler did Germany only BAD, or at the very least, he didn't improve its well-being. Non-Jew Germans were unaffected by the laws which Hitler put in place, because they were mainly to get rid of Jews in the end. Never was there an actual increase in profits or some sort of GDP when it came to the economy. The world was hit by the Great Depression still.

I'd also like to point out that Germany never even WANTED Hitler. The first election(s), Hitler only earned 30% of the vote. He was KILLED by his opponent, Paul von Hindenburg, who scored 50% of the vote. About 20% went to other candidates, meaning that Hitler was not voted for by 70% of the German people.

Technically, Hindenburg didn't earn majority vote (he had only 49.6% to be exact), so a run-off was held. Hitler got his ass handed to him once again.

The only reason Hitler got into power was because Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor after a couple of crazy years. Who knows why, because the Nazi party was a minority in the government, but that's the only way Hitler managed to gain dictatorship.

Now, because people didn't want Gestapo breaking their doors down, they did the work that Hitler gave them. But it did not benefit them AT ALL. It only provided a little food on the table, and that's it. Hitler did no good for Germany. I say he did more BAD.

As for other dictators, Gimli, find me a dictator who has not repressed freedoms, committed genocides, murdered opponents, endorsed terrorism, and/or drove his country into debt by using people's money to get what they want.

[Ravenblade]

Whereas that is true in a lot of cases Andross, it is an undeniable fact that Hitler took people off the streets in Germany. Unemployment went down rapidly under his reign. Im aware that he did a great deal more bad in Germany then good, but even looking at it on the global scene, the world needed another war in order to save the economies due to the depression. Roosevelt (i think it was Roosevlelt anyways) was saved by this as the US could start manufacturing weapons and so on.

Indirectly, Hitler dragged the world out of the depression - not that this was intentional or can really be called a good act. It was a mere side effect. But even so, not everything to do with Hitler was wrong. Just the vast majority of it.

Going back to Mao Zedong, although he induced totalitarianism on China, he dragged them into the modern era in the process. If he had not taken over and literally forced China to modernise then they would simply have been absorbed by the Japanese. The reason China exists as a country now is because of his leadership.

[TheDogWho]

Kim-Jong Il hasn't been mentioned yet.
It's kinda scary thinking that he might have nukes. Also, he's crazy as he made footage of people all around the world celebrating his birthday like they have to do in his country.

[Ravenblade]

Yeah North Korea are very tight ive heard. Sadly i do not know much about it except to say that i know someone who went there and he got an escorted tour from armed guards. To keep him in rather then to keep others out im thinking. The guy seems to be a bit of an odd dictator though as he has a thing for western cinema does he not? I heard he kidnapped movie stars but that could just be a rumour.

[Andross]

Ravenblade, on Feb 21 2005, 11:36 AM, said:

Whereas that is true in a lot of cases Andross, it is an undeniable fact that Hitler took people off the streets in Germany. Unemployment went down rapidly under his reign. Im aware that he did a great deal more bad in Germany then good, but even looking at it on the global scene, the world needed another war in order to save the economies due to the depression. Roosevelt (i think it was Roosevlelt anyways) was saved by this as the US could start manufacturing weapons and so on.

Indirectly, Hitler dragged the world out of the depression - not that this was intentional or can really be called a good act. It was a mere side effect. But even so, not everything to do with Hitler was wrong. Just the vast majority of it.

Hitler didn't drag the world out of a depression. Neither was the US in a depression by the time they came to enter the war. FDR had already created many different branches that helped get the US up to full steam. The war had NOTHING to do with the US recovery from the depression. If anything, it hurt it a bit, because with wars like that comes shortages. Money was being spent towards troops, not people.

In addition, it took a couple of decades to get out of the depression anyway. But that's besides the point. You misunderstand the basics of ecnomics. In your usual economy, there is a recession every 5 years or decade and a depression every 20 or 30 years. It takes 10 years to get out of one. Hitler did nothing to accellerate the rebuilding of economies. If anything, he slowed it down because countries in Europe had to focus on stopping him, and then they had to rebuild.

Inevitably, the depression would stop after 10 years. Only because of the rise of communism and the USSR did some areas continue to be in an economic funk.

Oh, and even though Hitler employed people to build his roads to death camps, it didn't mean they had something to work on after the war.

EDIT: Almost overlooked your China statement. That point is debateable, because usually democracies have better morale, but even without him, the US was intervening in those issues. China was already losing battles against Japan in WWII, before Pearl Harbor, and the US was trying to negotiate.

But the guy didn't do much good anywho. He technically modernised the economy, but he didn't really diversify or update every once in a while. Eventually, lots of farmland was choked, forests vanished, and pollution was HORRIBLE. China still has pollution problems, and is the worst when it comes to that, and some of it stems from that. Now they have health problems (guess where SARS came from?), some depleted resources, and uninhabitable land. Mr. Mao also decided to do a little ethnic cleansing on the side.

I think the only decent thing he did was unite people - despite more human rights violations in the process.

[Ravenblade]

Ok so maybe he didnt drag the world out of the depression - i admit to that being a generalisation on my part, but he certainly helped Germany at least, to get out of it.

I'm afraid i simply disagree about the US getting out of the depression before then - the mass production of weapons for global sale DID help the US economy recover. Admittedly though, my grasp of economics is not brilliant but this is more history then that. The Great Depression did not end in the US until 1941 when mobilization took people off the streets and gave them jobs in weapons production. Yes, Roosevelt had done work before hand but it is undeniable that WorldWar 2 ended it! (I checked this on numerous sources just to confirm it)

And saying that Hitler's modifications fell through afterwards holds no weight as he was dead and therefore could not continue any work that he was doing. I am NOT saying he was a good man, he was a despicable and evil man, BUT these effects were apparent.

And the China issue - well im taking a degree in Chinese modern history, and i can say for a fact that the US had minimal involvement in negotiations with Japan until after Pearl Harbor. The Chinese mistrusted foreign ideals at that point due to the poor treatment they had recieved from the west in recent times. They had a nationalist government while the japanese were overunning them that was meant to be democratic but it was useless and people abandoned it as it was poorly run and was more interested in the communists. The US saw this and switched to helping the communists (Mao Zedong) and aiding him in fighting back the japanese, but it was essentially the "unified Chinese spirit" that Mao induced that solved their problems.

[Andross]

WWII would not end the depression. The climb out was already occurring. If the war didn't happen, the US would have come out of the depression, the same as if Reagen didn't get himself involved with the USSR, it would still implode. The difference is they merely sped it up by a couple years, at best.

Second of all, Japan attacked the US primarily because they were taking China's side in talks to try and stop Japan from expanding. China may have gotten them out in the end, but Japan was still whooping up on them.

Quote

And saying that Hitler's modifications fell through afterwards holds no weight as he was dead and therefore could not continue any work that he was doing.

Uh, my point exactly. Hitler's "modifications" wouldn't hold if Germany lost and Hitler went too. Which did happen, and Germany just went right back into the slums. The fact that it happened FAST is strong evidence towards that. Economic changes take time. If an economy sees a sudden explosion in a matter of years, you can put a safe bet it's going down fast too, and in due time. The only reason Germans were okay during the decade of Hitler's reign was because they didn't want to die for not supporting "the Aryans." But the economic system wouldn't keep Germany from going down eventually, because there was no solid base for it. It only worked because of fear. That isn't how you make economies work, and even if people were employed, it didn't mean they were better off in most cases. Lots of Germans still starved because of the money going into the military.

[Ravenblade]

Well with all that said, the general trend as far as i can see it, is that dictators seem to start off as a benficial thing to a country that is in dire need (China/Germany/Russia) but then obviously, over time this gets defeated by increased corruption and paranoia about maintaining power. They only seem to appear in countries with little order and/or poor economies, and so generally they are a good means of unifying a country or state. However, it also seems that they are a short term solution to the countries problems as the situation seems to inevitably get worse after the initial period of unification.

[catastrophe]

This brings me back to my history class. You see i personaly believe that a dictatorship would work. Sure you have to deal with overall corruption, but thats only if you get a bad one, but what if you get a good one, that thats gone. Now the positive side. They can decisions faster because it does not have to go through a million people. This helps when things need to be made fast like during war. They can also altered. If many people are against somthing then the dictator may change his policy in fear of being overrun. Frence revolution anyone. And the political set up is a bit easyer to maintain. Also if it is a bad dictator don't worry, because he will get killed of eventally by a noble or someone who wants power.

[Platinum Sun]

I agree, but if I said it I would use slightly better grammar. For instance:
Capitalize "I", 2 L's in personally, there's an apostrophe in that's, I'm not sure what you meant by "that thats gone", you're missing 'make' form "they can decisions faster", what "things need to be made fast"? you probably meant 'they can also be altered', there's an e in something, that is the most abysmal spelling of 'French' I have ever seen, it's spelled 'easier', and there's a u in eventually.
The spell check button is not your enemy, stop avoiding it.

Once again, I must congratulate you, Platinum Sun! Your concern for grammar has led to a completely off topic post, yet another time. The spell check button is indeed your friend, but when it comes to spam, it appears to be a soul mate for you, no?
You have been issued a warning. Please make your posts relevant to the topic. - Riad