REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP

THE SPIRIT OF DESPOTISM:

UNDERSTANDING THE

TYRANT WITHIN

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and

nurse into greatness ... This and no other is the root from which a tyrant

springs; when he fi rst appears he is a protector.

— Plato, The Republic

The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man.

There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.

— Thomas Bailey, Leaves from a Notebook

Introduction

Throughout the ages, autocratic governments have been more the rule
than the exception; in fact, democratic forms of government have been
relatively rare. Despots from the past such as Caligula, Nero, Tamerlane,
Vlad the Impaler, Shaka Zulu, and Ivan the Terrible were followed in
the twentieth century by the likes of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao
Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Nicolae Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein, Fidel
Castro, Kim Jong Il, Muammar Qaddafi , and Robert Mugabe. Although
some of these leaders have been lionized as nation - builders despite the
atrocities they committed, most stand out for having instigated the worst
kinds of horror humans can infl ict on other humans, and some, such as
Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot, left tens of millions of dead in
their wake.

CHAPTER 8