{"id":4588,"date":"2019-11-11T14:17:54","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T14:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4588"},"modified":"2019-11-11T14:24:54","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T14:24:54","slug":"word-of-the-day-potentate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2019\/11\/11\/word-of-the-day-potentate\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Potentate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The word today is potentate<\/em>, which means \u201ca person who possesses great power, as a sovereign, monarch, or ruler.\u201d According to www.etymonline.com<\/a>, it enters the language \u201cc. 1400, from Old French potentat <\/em>and directly from Late Latin potentatus<\/em> \u2018a ruler,\u2019 also \u2018political power,\u2019 from Latin potentatus<\/em> \u2018might, power, rule, dominion,\u2019 from potentem<\/em> (nominative potens<\/em>) “powerful,” from potis<\/em> \u2018powerful, able, capable; possible;\u2019 of persons, \u2018better, preferable; chief, principal; strongest, foremost,\u2019 from PIE root *poti<\/strong>– \u2018powerful; lord.\u2019”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potentate<\/em> is not a\nword that one finds on people\u2019s lips very often in the 21st<\/sup> century.\nIt\u2019s kind of a general term, referring to a variety of different people of\npower. It sounds like a kind of Biblical word, but it could refer today to\nanyone who exercises power over others, including presidents, judges, and even\ncollege presidents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, Bolivian president Evo Morales resigned from\noffice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morales was a union boss, of the coca growers\u2019 union, from\nway back, and in 2002 he decided to use that base for a run at the Bolivian\npresidency. He lost that election, but in 2005, he won. He has been president\never since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morales is a socialist, and he was elected at a time when socialists were being elected throughout South America, though most of those socialist governments have been voted out in favor of governments more in favor of capitalism\u2014the obvious exception is Venezuela, where socialism still runs the show, and runs it into the ground. At first, Morales did some good things, like declaring Bolivia to be a \u201cplurinational\u201d and secular state, which makes including the many ethnic groups of Bolivia easier. He built up the infrastructure to help the poor, particularly the indigenous peoples (he himself is called the first indigenous president of Bolivia). Unfortunately, with the good came the bad, like nationalizing private industry and increasing the scope and power of the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The increasing power meant that Morales became corrupt, or\nperhaps more corrupt than he had been when he was just a union boss. In 2011,\nin response to Morales\u2019s plan to cut a highway through the Amazon, there were\nmajor protests, particularly by those indigenous people who feared that a\nhighway would enable illegal logging in the Amazon. The plan was shelved, but\nin 2017 Morales pressed on with the plan, ignoring the will of his people and\ndismissing international concerns as \u201cenvironmental colonialism.\u201d In 2019,\nMorales authorized extensive burning in protected areas of the Amazon in order\nto provide more farmland, despite protests from around the country and around\nthe globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, the ruling Movement for Socialism party, of which\nMorales was the head, proposed a national referendum to overturn a part of the\n2009 Constitution which prevented the president and vice president of Bolivia\nfrom running for a third term. Morales has already served three terms, but his\nfirst term did not count since the two-term limit was not in place when he won\nelection in 2005. The referendum failed by a national vote of 51.3% to 48.7%.\nNevertheless, the MAS took the term limit question to the Supreme Tribunal of\nJustice, which ruled that Morales would be able to run for another term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the most recent election, which Morales declared he\nhad won, the Organization of American States sent an investigatory team to\nBolivia. That team declared, \u201cMindful of the heap of observed irregularities,\nit\u2019s not possible to guarantee the integrity of the numbers and give certainty\nof the results.\u201d Protests in the streets erupted, leading to hundreds of injuries\nand three deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier on Sunday, a representative of the Bolivian military\nwent on television to announce that the military would not try to control the\nprotests through violence. Military leaders encouraged Morales to step down\nfrom his position in order that peace would return and free elections might\nhappen. Morales finally did so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His resignation, and the corruption that led to his\nresignation, has left Bolivia with some problems: the Vice President also\nresigned, as did the leader of the Senate, the third person in line to the\npresidency, leaving the question, \u201cWho\u2019s in charge?\u201d Of course, many,\nparticularly those on the Left, claim to fear a military coup and the return to\na military dictatorship, a form of government well-known to the Bolivian\npeople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evo Morales may have had good intentions when he became\npresident of Bolivia in 2005, though socialism is hardly the best way to help\nthe people of any country. But during the course of his almost 14 years in office,\nhe became a potentate. A potentate has power, and what we know to be true about\npower is that it corrupts. And the more power one has, and the longer that one\nhas that power, the more corrupt that person will become. What\u2019s worse, the\nperson who is corrupted by power may not even know it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word today is potentate, which means \u201ca person who possesses great power, as a sovereign, monarch, or ruler.\u201d According to www.etymonline.com, it enters the language \u201cc. 1400, from Old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4591,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions\/4591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}