What is tyranny?

Tyranny

Yes, I know.

Asking this is almost as much a step into a quagmire as asking what is political realism.

All the same, given the hysterical and, one hopes, almost entirely dishonest wrath of the noisy right, unfortunately as extreme as always but no longer a disreputable, outsider fringe, according to which president Obama is a tyrant, it may help to refresh ourselves a bit on the topic.

In the ancient world, a tyrant was a dictator and “tyranny” could be given a morally neutral definition in terms of autocracy with power unbounded by law.

In most cases, ancient tyrants were usurpers, ambitious looters employing savage means to obtain and keep their power, but in some they were lawfully appointed to their office for the purpose of using ordinarily unlawful and generally, yes, savage means to rescue the state from its enemies.

The means in question in all cases made the ideas of cruelty and violence inseparable from that of tyranny, and the examples of the usurpers, in particular, tied it to the notion of exploitive purpose and, in the minds of moral believers, to injustice.

“Tyranny” was thus taken to mean absolutist autocracy characterized by notable cruelty, violence, and harshness and ruling in the interests of the ruler rather than or contrary to those of his subjects.

And, in the eyes of moral believers, ruling unjustly.

This idea of tyranny persisted through the Enlightenment and into modern times, but a look at any dictionary shows that the word is not now confined to autocracy or to government that is lawless, so to speak, on principle, and that its restriction to self-interested government has disappeared; indeed, the restriction to government has disappeared.

As is not unusual, hyperbole and metaphor have over time expanded the literal meaning of the term so that this definition is not untypical.

Tyranny

It is very much to the point to note well that the applicability of the term requires, even in its narrow and older sense, for instance, a lawlessness in the regime extending well beyond a penchant for official double-parking, say.

And in either the older and narrower or newer and broader usage it likewise requires cruelty, harshness, and violence extending well beyond the degrees characteristic of the ordinary run of governments.

As well as, for the moral believers, what would generally be thought by them far more extensive injustice than is typical.

On the other hand, to be fair, it is well here to recall that the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and their like perpetrated in the 20^th Century horrors on such as scale as to make “tyranny,” understood according to earlier examples, seem far too weak a word, though taken in the narrow and older sense and shorn of the requirement of self-interested rule it most certainly does apply.

The revolutionary violence and permanent terror licensed by versions of Marxism in political and intellectual descent from Lenin and aimed at complete destruction of the existing order – social, political, and economic – in sincere or pretended pursuit of a childish utopian fantasy by way of egregious anti-capitalist stupidities showed us governments far, far more violent, harsh, and cruel than any previous tyranny ever was.

And though Italian Fascism was certainly not in the same blood-soaked league as these red nightmares, Hitler’s intentions for Slavic Europe, had they been realized, would have put even Pol Pot well into the shade.

Murder by Government

Democide

We should, I think, recognize that these examples, taking the long view of Western history, are wildly exceptional outliers and that fair application of the word, “tyranny,” most certainly does not suppose any remotely similar degree or quantity of horror.

Still, as noted earlier, one swallow does not make a summer, and it does require rather an extraordinary lot of cruelty, harshness, and violence.

And, again judging by history, in the eyes of moral believers its proper application requires clearly and egregiously exceptional injustice.

Restricting the carrying of weapons to law enforcement or others with special needs, something nearly all regimes have done both before and since the development of firearms, hardly suffices.

Nor does even banning ownership of certain especially dangerous weapons to the general public.

Generally speaking, regulation for public safety of any exceptionally dangerous hobby is obviously simply not tyranny, even according to the most lax modern usage; not even remotely.

Nor is taxation – neither cruel, harsh, nor violent in itself – to support public benefits such as parks, schools, hospitals, fire departments, highways, and so on.

Nor does the word “tyranny,” even thus loosely understood, apply to regulation of economic activity to protect employees, consumers, competitors, the environment, or otherwise the general public – again, neither cruel, harsh, nor violent in itself.

But those, of course, are the usual grounds for right-wing howls that Obama is a tyrant.