![]() ![]() Shirer’s authoritative books on the Third Reich. He merely kept the name after taking it over and paid lip service to workers while stoking their nationalism and desire for war with the support of Germany’s conservative capitalist elite. A tyrant, in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate rulers sovereignty. Just as liberals resent being called communists, conservatives bristle when Nazis are described as right wing, pointing out that “nazi” is short for “national socialist.” But Hitler’s party wasn’t socialist. “Communist” and “facist” are also ridiculously misused accusations, but “Nazi” is the most fraught because the Holocaust is more vivid in our consciousness than the mass slaughters perpetrated by communist dictators such as Stalin and Mao. Instead, he’s become a demon who represents a medical/corporate/government establishment many Americans understandably distrust and loathe. Fauci had not held his forehead in astonishment at President Trump’s press conference remarks in March 2020, or publicly contradicted Trump about COVID-19, few people would know or care about Fauci now. : relating to or like that of tyranny or a tyrant tyrannical acts gargantuan Test Your Vocabulary Challenging Words You Should Know Often used to describe the march of time, what does inexorable mean Swift Slow Unpredictable Relentless Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words TAKE THE QUIZ A daily challenge for crossword fanatics. Tyranny A form of non-government where a tyrant rules a group of people who are too stupid to kill him. It’s dispiriting to see it reach the point where health officials, educators and others who have the best interests of fellow citizens at heart are called Nazis. Politicians and partisan commentators would be left mute without gross exaggeration. They are the basis for an orderly civilization, though some people seem to believe that personal freedom should never be limited even when it hurts others. But rules and laws are not tyranny in and of themselves. If you need a haunting personal account of what Hitler wrought after vowing to do so, read Elie Wiesel’s memoir “Night.” It’s only 109 pages but it powerfully reveals our “Nazi” claims as the shameful drivel they are.Īmericans are so politically divided that many on either side will not tolerate living under the other’s preferred rules. If being required to wear a face mask or be vaccinated for the sake of your fellow citizens’ health is brutal repression, look into daily life in North Korea. More about Pisistratus More about republics Quatr.Americans scream “Tyranny!” so easily and often that the word is losing all meaning. How is he like Pisistratus? More about Pisistratus More about democracy Bibliography and further reading about tyranny: ![]() ![]() Learn by doing: watch the Godfather movie. In Rome, the Senate killed Tiberius Gracchus because they thought he might become a tyrant. Another tyrant was Dionysos of Syracuse, whom Plato went to teach. His sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, became tyrants after him, and the other rich men murdered one of them. One of the most famous tyrants was Pisistratus in Athens. In English today, tyrant means a bad king, but that is because the rich men hated tyrants, and in ancient Greece only the rich men could write. You can see that tyrants are usually really good for the poor people, and only bad for the other rich men. Usually the tyrant promises one or two (or all three) of these things: In order to stay in power, the tyrant has to promise the poor people that he will do good things for them, so they will support him. Naturally the other rich men hated tyrants, and tried to stop them and go back to an oligarchy again. Tyrants are something like Mafia bosses like the Godfather. So a tyrant is like a king, but a king who does not have the law or religion behind him, and only rules because the poor people support him. But the other rich men keep them from doing it.īut if one of the rich men thinks of asking for help from the poor people, he can get ahead that way, and may make himself tyrant. This is how tyrannies usually grew out of oligarchies: in an oligarchy, each of the rich men is always trying to get more power than the others. “Tyrant” is probably a Lydian word, from West Asia. In Greece and West Asia, mainly in what is now Turkey, there was a period of time around 650-400 BC when tyrants ruled many city-states. Kritios Boy statue from the time of the tyranny in Athens
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