DICTATORSHIPS are like a good many other things in this world. They can be the best, or the worst, form of government.
There are some excellent dictatorships, and there are some hateful ones. Nevertheless, be they good or bad, it generally happens that they are imposed by circumstances, and, when this is the case, the people concerned have no choice but to put up with them. Inasmuch as a nation cannot be too strongly urged not to drift into a situation which leaves it no alternative but helpless acquiescence, this brief and cursory survey of dictators as they have displayed themselves at successive stages of the world's history may not be without profit to the French people at this present juncture.
INTRODUCTION
WE are constantly deluding ourselves with the notion that things are new, when, in truth, we are but repeating the experiences of former generations and treading the paths which they long since have trod. The dictatorships of our time came into being on the morrow of the day when President Wilson enjoined us to 'make the world safe for democracy. The victory of the Allies was universally hailed as a triumph for the democratic spirit in all its varied forms. Amid the din of falling thrones, three empires came crashing to the ground. The monarchical system, by which the control of the State is vested in one sole person, seemed doomed to extinction. Who would have dreamt that one-man rule would ever come into its own again? When the first dictator came upon the scene, his advent was greeted with incredulity. A few days, men prophesied, would surely set a term to his dominion. In France, one politician went the length of publicly deriding him as a comic-opera Caesar. And then, when the fashion seemed to be spreading, people consoled themselves with the belief that, if it was an epidemic, it would assuredly stop short at the frontiers of the Greater Powers, of those countries which had a liberal tradition at the back of them, and a firmly established progressive wing. As for inflation and debased currencies, these things, though not unknown, were looked upon as evils proper to impoverished, primitive or ill-governed communities. It was not for a moment to be thought of that the wealthier nations, equipped as they were with a well-organized financial system, would fall a prey to such grave disorders. All this turned out to be a grievous miscalculation. The monetary system fell a victim to disease in the very places where it seemed to be flourishing most securely. Dictatorships sprang up in countries where they had long been looked upon as unimaginable. There they took firm root, despite the fact that, for a long time, the dictators themselves, when still no more than popular sedition-mongers, had never been taken seriously. It is no mere caprice that has led us to connect a disordered currency with the emergence of despotic forms of government. The one precedes, and often begets, the other, because, for the vast majority of people, it is the most obvious symptom of national disintegration.
(300 pages later)
CONCLUSION
measure pfuncertainty. It is desirable to be sparing of Itfiem7 desirable, that is, not to have need of them, or not to drift into them unwittingly. Eckermann once asked Goethe if the human race would ever see the end of way “Yes” answered the sage of Weimar, provided that governments are always intelligent and the governed always reasonable. We will say the same of dictators. We can do without them on the same condition. But good governments are rare. And Voltaire said that the bulk of the human race always were, and always would be, imbeciles.
ps: a bonus from the same author:
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/bainville_jacques/conse...
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The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/privacy_and_th...
http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2009/budg...