Courtesy mw.com:
au·thor·i·tar·i·an adj \o?-?thär-?-?ter-?-?n, ?-, -?tho?r-\
Definition of AUTHORITARIAN
1: of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority <had authoritarian parents>
2: of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people <an authoritarian regime>
des·pot noun \?des-p?t, -?pät\
Definition of DESPOT
1a: a Byzantine emperor or prince
1b: a bishop or patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church
1c: an Italian hereditary prince or military leader during the Renaissance
2a: a ruler with absolute power and authority
2b: a person exercising power tyrannically
President Barack Obama was voted into power, fair and square, in a democratic election. He didn't seize power in a coup, palace or otherwise. He hasn't favored "a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people". Therefore, he is not authoritarian. He is neither "a Byzantine emperor or prince", nor is he "a bishop or patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church", nor is he "an Italian hereditary prince or military leader during the Renaissance", nor is he "a ruler with absolute power and authority", and nor is he "a person exercising power tyrannically". Therefore, he is not a despot.
I honestly cannot believe how vociferously you are coming out to defend
this President against the term "authoritarian despot", when by far President Bush was called many worse things (Satan, Hitler, et. al.) and who was also openly threatened in books and films about his (hypothetical) assassination. Methinks you doth protest too much, and given that, let me show you precisely how despotic Barack Obama is.
Sure, he was elected President—we're one of the few nations in the world to have such peaceful, democratic transfers of power between our political leaders. But, there are still such obvious cases of election fraud such in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (hello New Black Panthers) and the unilateral decision by the Justice Department in that case and all cases similar to it (i.e., black-on-white discrimination)
not to prosecute black defendants, such as when the New Black Panther case was dropped and literally snatched from the jaws of victory (i.e., a summary judgment against defendants who didn't even bother to show up to court). Those bad men got off scot-free from documented election fraud. I find it curious that you don't seem to think that lays any blame at the feet of the man
for whom they were illegally electioneering.
(By the way, if the unions call the democratically elected governor of Wisconsin a despot the likes of Hitler, does that mean they consider Obama a despot as well? You can't have your cake and eat it too.)
As to the statement that Barack Obama "hasn't favored a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people", I simply point you to the massive federal governmental bureaucracy that he has expanded by over 200,000 employees SINCE his "immaculation", and to the myriad of unelected CZARS for every little task he sets up. Here's just a choice few as of 2009, all positions newly-created in the Obama regime:
Afghanistan Czar — Richard Holbrooke
Auto Recovery Czar — Ed Montgomery
California Water Czar — David J. Hayes
Car Czar — Ron Bloom
Central Region (Middle East) Czar — Dennis Ross
Climate Czar — Todd Stern
Domestic Violence Czar — Lynn Rosenthal
Energy and Environment Czar — Carol Browner
Government Performance Czar — Jeffrey Zients
Great Lakes Czar — Cameron Davis
Green Jobs Czar — Van Jones (now former Green Jobs Czar)
Guantanamo Closure Czar — Daniel Fried (how's that working out for you?
)
Information Czar — Vivek Kundra
Mideast Peace Czar — George Mitchell
Pay Czar — Kenneth R. Feinberg
Beyond that, I only need to look to the various regulatory agencies, like the FCC, EPA, FDA, et. al., who have all passed or wish to pass sweeping new regulations on industries that were previously outside their purview, such as the FCC deciding to REGULATE THE INTERNET. You can't tell me that were the President against all these regulations, he would allow his agencies to go forward with all these new restrictions on the personal liberties of average Americans!
Need I even start down the road of discussing how literally UNCONSTITUTIONAL that Obamacare is? I will! Briefly, Federal District Judge Roger Vinson of Florida struck down the entirety of "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" because of its individual mandate, which is not severable from the entire law. Does the President order the implementation of the law to stop? NO! He orders that states continue implementing a law which should currently be on complete HOLD during appeals, and files a motion clarifying the (clear) ruling from Judge Vinson that he did indeed issue an implicit injunction in the order declaring the law unconstitutional!
Additionally, during the BP oil crisis last year, Obama issued a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which was struck down by District Court Judge Martin Feldman. Did Obama comply with the order rescinding the ban? No! He simply issued another ban on top of the old one, in direct defiance of a judicial branch, co-equal government, court order!
To top all that off, today we hear that the President simply is ordering his Justice Department no longer to enforce the "Defense of Marriage Act" that was enacted during the Clinton presidency. The "Messiah" declared it "unconstitutional" purely by fiat. There were no court rulings nullifying the law; Congress hadn't passed anything that changed that law. The president simply doesn't want to enforce it. Now, if he's sworn to uphold the laws of the land, he doesn't have a say in which laws he "chooses" to enforce—otherwise, abortion-on-demand as a result of Roe v. Wade would have been nullified by several previous presidents.
Barack Hussein Obama defines precisely the concept of a man who wishes "[to favor] a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people"—he himself believes himself to be and wishes that he were above the Constitution and the courts that interpret its meaning and requirements. He ignores constitutional law; he inserts himself into state and local politics whenever it suits his political agenda; he enacts unconstitutional legislation, and defies court orders.
Barack Hussein Obama is LAWLESS. He is an ABOMINATION. He is an EVIL MAN. Words mean things, and I mean it when I say he is the most DESPOTIC leader this country has ever faced, and his Administration is rightly called the Obama REGIME. He rules callously in direct contravention of his sworn duties to defend and uphold the Constitution and the laws and institutions which spring from it, and in deliberate opposition to the will of the American people in specific example of his Obamacare.
However, by your willful misuse of these terms to describe a democratically-elected president of your own country, Q_BE, you have proven yourself once again to be at best a semi-illiterate chauvinist, and at worst to be a dimwitted, borderline racist fool of gargantuan proportions.
Q_BE, you have proven yourself to be incapable of critical independent thought. Unless and until you learn that words have actual, verifiable, commonly-agreed-upon meanings, and that misuse of words have consequences, I shall no longer attempt to exchange ideas with you. You are an embarrassment. It's because of people like you that the following sayings were invented:
"Never bring a knife to a gunfight."
"Never engage in a battle of wits, when your opponent is obviously unarmed."
Go back and read the Constitution. Don't cheat by listening to Rush Limbaugh's or Sean Hannity's or Glenn Beck's misinterpretation of it, and don't go get the Cliff's Notes. Go back and read the actual document. And while you're at it, go back and read the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Once you have a thorough grounding on what democracy is, and how it works, then you can try reading Karl Marx's Das Kapital, so that you learn what Marxism is, and after that you can tackle The Communist Manifesto, so that you can learn what communism is, and then Freidrich Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, so that you can learn what socialism is. They are all available to read for free in any public library, or on the Internet. While you are reading of all this, make sure that you have an unabridged dictionary available, so that you can find out the true meanings of any words that you come across. I'm sure that you will run across many such words. The fact that you continuously misuse the words "liberal" and "conservative" as nouns instead of using them as adjectives, is proof of that.
All of this reading will achieve two aims. One, you will finally be able to intelligently discuss current affairs, instead of regurgitating biased opinions proffered to you by the fellow intellectual midgets of the Faux News brigade. And two, you will be out of our hair here, as intelligent adults try and discuss current affairs.
Good luck.
You say I know not of which I speak. I respond that you and all the leftists on this forum are the ones who are willfully ignorant and willfully disingenuous liars—you're willfully ignorant of the realities staring you in the face about the utter totalitarian that this current president is, and you're willfully disingenuous in refusing to admit that you choose not to see the truth. Your arrogance, and the condescension with which you treat all who espouse conservatism and other right-wing ideologies, is abhorrent, evil, and morally corrupt. You resort to vituperatively viscious ad hominem attacks in pathetic, puerile attempts to discredit those who defeat you in the arena of ideas. I am literally running out of words to describe just how egregiously invidious you are.
Were you to admit it of yourselves, you live in a world built on HATE. You hate the Constitution. You hate the restrictions on government it provides. You hate those who dare puncture your tiny worldview built on lies and the propagation of falsehoods. You lack compassion for the American individual. You reject the basic human natural yearnings for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You are contemptuous of anybody who doesn't fall in line with your abhorrent identity politics based on race, sex, gender orientation, and anything else into which you can cut, divide, and define groups of victims in America.
In short, sir, you and your kind reject reality and substitute it with your world of lies based on fealty to atheism, socialism, evolution, environmentalism, and the general worship of the government as your god. There is no place for you in civil discourse because you are not capable of civil discourse. You are not capable of governing yourselves or anyone else, and you ought to be ashamed that your president is wreaking chaos and havoc across the world and in this country thanks to his narcissistic sociopathy. I know that no words of mine can ever hope to reach across the great divide that separates your world from mine, but I stand upon truth, justice, and the American way of life, which is the basis of the freest, greatest, strongest country this world has ever known, and long after you are swept onto the ash heap of history, lovers of freedom will look back on this day as the sad final chapter in human history of an ideology that was long ago discredited and discarded for the rubbish it is.
Q-"
Give me liberty, or give me death"-BE
EDIT: I call upon all fellow conservatives in this forum to join me in defending these words condemning the liberals on this forum for their egregious ad hominem attacks on their fellow conservative members such as myself. I call upon them to have the courage of conviction and character to add their voice to mine in rejection of the false premises upon which they base their specious attacks on conservatives' character.
Yes, that means you people such as JJ, solvegas, PregNut, and others. Yes, you!