Comments on: Hail To The Tyrant! http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/06/22/hail-to-the-tyrant/ Not Your Grandfather's Conservatism Thu, 03 Sep 2015 20:20:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.7 By: Isaac Lewis http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/06/22/hail-to-the-tyrant/#comment-17482 Mon, 24 Aug 2015 13:46:00 +0000 http://www.socialmatter.net/?p=2277#comment-17482 Plato said the tyrant’s ruling principle was passion — quite an apt description, if you think of modern tyrants like Mao or Stalin who were notorious womanisers and (at least in the case of Mao) into artistic expression too.

(Plato’s other rulers, from best to worst, were the military timarch ruled by honour, the oligarch ruled by love of wealth, and the democrat ruled by freedom.)

]]> By: The Cathedral Is Democracy - Social Matter http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/06/22/hail-to-the-tyrant/#comment-16201 Mon, 27 Jul 2015 13:01:07 +0000 http://www.socialmatter.net/?p=2277#comment-16201 […] see how this is so, let’s look back at the first democracy: Athens. As I discussed before, Greek city-states were initially ruled by aristocratic republics. These republics were controlled […]

]]> By: Horus http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/06/22/hail-to-the-tyrant/#comment-14549 Tue, 23 Jun 2015 09:45:57 +0000 http://www.socialmatter.net/?p=2277#comment-14549 Lydia was also called Sfarda or Sparda by the native Lydians.

]]> By: Mark Citadel http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/06/22/hail-to-the-tyrant/#comment-14545 Tue, 23 Jun 2015 08:49:38 +0000 http://www.socialmatter.net/?p=2277#comment-14545 A tyrant seems then very similar to a warlord, that is one who can enforce his political rule only by the material means at his disposal and not from loyalty of the people. For this, in the long term it seems tyranny is not entirely stable or at least it shouldn’t be without factoring in some other dynamic at play. Divine right had problems in Greece because their theology was not very advanced in the sense of its political relevancy. As compared with other theologies that existed in the Middle East and elsewhere and were very well suited to autocratic rule, the Greeks lacked this. See Egypt for example.

Yes, the people do wish for righteous government. This I think, can never be forgotten by anyone who supports autocracy. It must be a bedrock principle of the successful autocrat.

]]> By: Gordian http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/06/22/hail-to-the-tyrant/#comment-14505 Mon, 22 Jun 2015 15:49:43 +0000 http://www.socialmatter.net/?p=2277#comment-14505 We can certainly praise the great tyrants or their latin counterparts, the Republican dictator, but the philosophic tradition irrevocably assigned the moral meaning to those words as in The Republic and The Politics. A tyrant is a ruler who is a slave to his passions. If we want to talk about these ancient concepts in a contemporary sense, we need a new rhetoric and a new paradigm of power and authority to describe it.

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