Regime

I was over on Mysa's LJ again (I know, I"m just a glutton for punishment) and saw this today- Countdown to Regime Change

My first thought was annoyance. Like many, I always think of 'regimes' in terms of military or fascist ones. Now, I know that's how Mysa thinks about this Precidency, but before I went shooting my mouth off over there, I looked up the word-

Regime

In general, it's just another word for government. I like what this part of the entry said though-

A system of government or administration. The most common use of this promiscuous term in recent years has been in the phrase ‘military regime’. So while any government may be termed a regime, be it monarchical, aristocratic, republican, or tyrannical, the term unavoidably conjures up memories of tanks in the streets in Latin America and Eastern Europe. This is to be regretted, since it has two more technical senses in which it may not easily be replaced. First, when governments come and go with bewildering frequency, as in nineteenth-century Spain or post-1945 Italy, there may still be an absence of fundamental or revolutionary change. In these circumstances it is possible to speak of regime continuity. Alternatively, and more rarely, a change of regime (from constitutional monarchy to tyranny, or from dispersed to centralized government) may be achieved without a change in government, as in the move from parliamentary to personal rule by Charles I of England, or under Margaret Thatcher. Secondly, in international relations the difficulty of accommodating the rise of non-state actors within state-centric realist models of explanation has led to use of the term ‘regime’ to cover norm-bound interactions relating to issues such as the global environment or human rights, in which states, international organizations, transnational corporations, individuals, and worldwide pressure groups like Greenpeace or Amnesty International all take part.

(emphasis mine)

So, the Left gets to call the Bush presidency a regime, which is technically accurate, and at the same time brings to mind the military and fascist regimes of the past (as it immediately did with me). So, if I call her out on it, she can claim that the usage is correct, and if I let it go she gets to use the imagery of dictators and evil men. It's a win-win scenario for the Left.

Something to keep in mind if Hillary, Obama or any of their cronies ever end up in the White House. Somehow though, I think that we'd get called 'meanspirited' or some such if we did the same thing.

Oh well...such is politics, and why I have very little I can politely say to Mysa anymore... :( At least I learned the actual meaning of the word, so SOME good came out of it!


Tags-Liberals