{"id":32073,"date":"2018-03-08T07:31:12","date_gmt":"2018-03-08T12:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32073"},"modified":"2018-03-08T07:31:12","modified_gmt":"2018-03-08T12:31:12","slug":"how-many-terms-till-youre-a-tyrant-ripe-for-regime-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32073","title":{"rendered":"How Many Terms Till You\u2019re a Tyrant Ripe for Regime Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Many Terms Till You\u2019re a Tyrant Ripe for Regime Change?<\/a><\/h3>\n
In some cases, the hint that a country might be removing presidential term limits provides Washington sufficient cause to support a coup, but in other cases Washington celebrates presidents-for-life, observes Ted Snider.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Donald Trump caused some concern last week when he appeared to praise Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2019s removal of term limits<\/a> on the president from the Chinese constitution, clearing the path for him to become \u201cpresident for life.\u201d At a fundraiser in Florida,\u00a0Trump said<\/a>, \u201cHe\u2019s now president for life. President for life. No, he\u2019s great.\u201d He then added, to enthusiastic cheers: \u201cI think it\u2019s great. Maybe we\u2019ll have to give that a shot some day.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jos\u00e9 Manuel Zelaya, president of Honduras from January \u2013 June 2009. Photo: Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Perhaps Trump was joking about China\u2019s removal of presidential term limits from the constitution, but the U.S. wasn\u2019t laughing when removing presidential term limits from the Honduran constitution was being considered. Washington backed a coup instead.<\/p>\n

How many consecutive terms turns a president into a dictator? Many parliamentary democracies lack term limits. In Britain, Robert Walpole was prime minister for almost 21 years. William Pitt the Younger served for almost 19 and Thatcher and Blair served for 12 and 10 respectively. Washington never called Thatcher or Blair a dictator. In Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King served as P.M. for more than 21 years. Canada\u2019s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, served for almost 19, and Pierre Elliot Trudeau, father of the current prime minister, served for 15.<\/p>\n

Term limits became a constitutional issue early in America. Many of the framers backed lifetime appointment for presidents. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both supported lifetime terms. So did others. One person would have swung the vote as it was defeated by a margin of only six votes to four.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Many Terms Till You\u2019re a Tyrant Ripe for Regime Change? In some cases, the hint that a country might be removing presidential term limits provides Washington sufficient cause to support a coup, but in other cases Washington celebrates presidents-for-life, observes Ted Snider. Donald Trump caused some concern last week when he appeared to praise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[130,6963,7934,7844,1343,18278,1492,19160,827,865,6392],"class_list":["post-32073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-china","tag-consortium-news","tag-dictatorship","tag-donald-trump","tag-regime-change","tag-ted-snider","tag-tyranny","tag-tyrant","tag-united-states","tag-washington","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32074,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32073\/revisions\/32074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}