The Weimar Republic Was Certainly A Self-Conscious Attempt At Liberal Democracy And It Fell To Nazism - A response

I KNEW IT WAS TOO FAR for the comfort of right thinking liberals for me to point out that liberal democracy has not proven to be a bulwark against Nazism, fascism and other forms of dictatorship in all those cases I mentioned.    And a lot of the reasons for that are intrinsic to its liberal democracy AND OURS.   If I had time I'd find a more detailed resource but, in a quick search for what is available, here from The Weiner Holocaust Library is a list of "strengths" and "weaknesses" of the Weimar Republic

The strengths and weaknesses of the republic are discussed below.

Strengths

The republic had many democratic strengths. It allowed individual freedoms for everyone. This granted the right to free speech, the right to equality and the right to religion to every German citizen.

You won't be surprised if I break in here to say that any "right to free speech" and especially if that includes a right to publish which includes the fictitious "right to lie" is a fatal defect in such a notion.  In the case of Germany, it lied them right into Nazism, in the case of the United States it has repeatedly lied us into the worst Congresses, presidencies and Supreme Courts that have defeated equality and legitimate governance for our entire history.   It is one of the grossest stupidities of liberal democracy that that distinction between the right to tell the truth and there being no right to lie doesn't seem to be something that most liberal democrats have yet twigged onto in the past two hundred fifty one years. 

All adults over the age of twenty could vote. The voting system used was Proportional Representation , a fair system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them.

Speaking just of our liberal democracy and too many others,  since the start of ours, it has been one of the signal efforts of some of the greatest power blocks in the United States to keep those with an allegedly legal right to vote from either voting or, if they could, to make sure that those votes don't result in representation in the government through districting and gerrymandering and the longest and most successful program of terrorism in American history.   Only our ubiquitous forms of such terrorism are called by other names, like "federalism" and "tradition."    And the "right to lie" is the major tool in all of that. 

This system was used to elect the president and the Reichstag.

From 1924 onwards the republic also had a new currency, and following the implementation Dawes Plan, experienced a period of relative economic stability.

Weaknesses

Despite the above, the republic had four weaknesses.

Proportional Representation was a very democratic electoral system, but it allowed lots of parties to be elected to the Reichstag. No one party was ever elected with a majority. This meant that parties had to form coalitions to rule. Coalitions often disagreed on laws and policies due to their differing views, which made it extremely difficult to govern decisively.

Some American analogs occur to me but I'd have to develop those in a longer form than I have time for, today. 

In addition to the above, Article 48 of the constitution gave the president authority to rule by decree in the state of an emergency, bypassing the elected Reichstag. It did not, however, give a definition as to what constituted a ‘state of emergency’. This article was repeatedly misused by Hindenburg and eventually allowed Hitler to ‘legally’ take total control of Germany.

Our form of that can be seen in the many, many ways in which the Congress, to start with, gave powers that the original Constitution assigned to the Congress to the presidency,  making war, charging tariffs, etc,  and the Supreme Court under Roberts and even before made that far worse through its unitary executive form of fascist rule by a strong-man Republican-fascist president.   Some day I may go into the history of that fascist theory of the U.S. Constitution, in its modern form invented by such as Antonin Scalia, Ed Meese and the putrid Harvard Law dean Charles Fried.    The role that the Ivy law schools played in the foundation of America's fascism is enormous and none of us should ever trust those institutions ever again.

The reliance on foreign loans following the Dawes Plan led to a severe economic depression following the Wall Street Crash. This ultimately led to further political instability, and eventually, contributed to the end of democratic government.

Two words:  Scott Bessent.  Only those two because I'm already late for an appointment. 

Finally, many of the old conservative elite who had held key positions of power under the monarchy had continued in similar roles in the Weimar Republic. Whilst this was an attempt to maintain stability in government as the new republic settled, it in fact meant that these civil servants and military leaders still had enormous influence and power. The power and influence of the conservative elite would later be crucial in appointing Hitler as chancellor.

Two Words: James Comey.   Who will have to stand in for so many others who could be named here.  Many of those under the "conservative elite" who aided the rise of Hitler found that their decision came back to bite them.   I feel about them in the way I feel about the ranchers and farmers and others who are whining about getting what they voted for,  FAFO.   

As it turns out, a non-egalitarian democracy, especially a liberal democracy turns out to be far, far from a shield from fascism, in many ways it facilitates fascism, even under majority rule by a majority who buys lies, racism, bigotry and a rejection of equality.  

Equality, including economic equality,  is the safest guarantee against fascism, not libertarian "liberty."   Not "the first amendment."  Black People, Women, etc. lived entirely non-democratic lives under "the First Amendment" for just about our entire history.  It has yet to deliver that.