Neo-con oligarchy

[nowareman]

I am sure everyone has heard the term neo-con by now to describe the people in the Bush administration who have come up with the theory behind the Bush Doctrine which states America should be the preeminent power and the 21st century will be the Ameican Century. You can read all about it at PNAC's site but my point here is this. I was thinking about the situation in Russia right now where it seems Putin has had Russia's richest man arrested and jailed. This is just a continuation of centuries of Russian oligarchy and it struck me that what we have here in America right now is a neo-con oligarchy. I don't know if anyone will agree with me but here's the definition of oligarchy. Marry it with neo-con philisophy and I believe the result will be very close to what our current leadership is right now.

Main Entry: ol·i·gar·chy
Pronunciation: 'ä-l&-"gär-kE, 'O-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -chies
Date: 1542
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control
3 : an organization under oligarchic control

 

[syzygy]

an elected goverment has a right to implement their own political philosophy in seeing their through their national and international programs. that is true
of every elected administration. just because you don't agree with them, and are powerless to influence them because your side came up short in recent
elections, does not amount to having an oligarchic, dictatorial, or other such unrepresentative form of gov't.

 

[nowareman]

Originally posted by: syzygy
an elected goverment has a right to implement their own political philosophy in seeing their through their national and international programs. that is true
of every elected administration. just because you don't agree with them, and are powerless to influence them because your side came up short in recent
elections, does not amount to having an oligarchic, dictatorial, or other such unrepresentative form of gov't.

Making policy based on the political philosophy of a few far from center members as well as using a few leaders of industry to form national policy on energy for instance seems to me to be oligarchic in nature. Add to that the financial interests of a very few American businessmen in Iraq and again it seems to be oligarchy. After all the energy policies and the Iraq policy have done little for Americans and much for a very few.

 

[syzygy]

wrong. because regardless of how many or how small this number of persons is, they all represent the views of the elected administration.
the philosophy of any adminsitration is defined top down. therefore, if you want a paranoid definition of unrepresentative government, you
should opt for dictatorship, not oligarchy. because the wolfowitzes, rumsfelds, rices, et al would not have 1400 washington avenue as their
business address if not for president bush. president bush is the elected king of the hill and all flows from him.

 

[Witling]

Some of us think that Bush was appointed, not elected.