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A juvenile answer is that devilish persons somehow seize the levers of power while the nation's people are innocently going about their business. Wearing sinister smiles and twirling the tips of their moustaches in dastardly fashion, the tyrants unilaterally impose their criminal wills upon the populace.
The People soon realize that their dictators are venal and vile, but there's little they can do other than silently submit. The People are enslaved. Their only hope for emancipation is the intervention of a superhero - a courageous peasant, perhaps, to lead a revolution, or a noble foreign government deploying its military worldwide to protect humanity from evildoers.
I describe this answer as "juvenile," and it is certainly so. But this answer nevertheless captures the greater part of the attitude of many adults. According to this attitude, tyranny is blatant, pure, and obvious to everyone - almost cartoonishly so - and therefore it is never accepted voluntarily. Tyranny is unalloyed evil that is pressed down mercilessly upon the unfortunate masses.
In the minds of us enlightened denizens of 21st-century democracies, tyranny is the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France. It's the Nazis and Fascists of 80 years ago. It's Stalin and Mao and Saddam Hussein. It's Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, and the Taliban today.
To those of us who conduct real and regular elections, tyranny seems to be confined to such regimes - regimes distant in time or place and, hence, culturally remote from us.
Tyrants Are Always Believed
These past and distant regimes are indeed tyrannical. Yet the popular attitude toward them is dangerously immature. Every tyrant convinces large numbers of the people under his rule that he uses force exclusively for the greater good. Tyrant wannabes who fail to convince The People of these wannabes' noble purposes never grab the power they crave. Too few of The People submit.
Each actual tyrant points to some problem - perhaps real or perhaps fabricated yet unfailingly exaggerated - the persistence of which will inflict on his beloved People unprecedented harm. He persuades The People to obey him in his pose as a courageous and caring visionary unafraid to use whatever powers he must in order to save his People from the terrible perils that otherwise await them. And he insists that his exercise of power must be broad and bold, unchecked by legal or ethical niceties which would only prevent him from saving his flock.
Quaking in fear of these terrible perils and hopeful for the promised salvation, The People submit. Sheeplike.
Many people, of course, recognize and even chafe under the dictator's arbitrariness and the harshness of his diktats. But believing these diktats to be necessary for the greater good, most of even these people meekly comply. "The end result tomorrow will be worth the pain, suffering, and indignity today. We have no good choice but to obey our leader" - so goes the thinking.
Thus does actual tyranny arrive and survive. It arrives and survives always with the acceptance - and often also with the enthusiastic approval - of large numbers of its victims. These victims thus do not sense that they are living under tyranny. Tyranny is what happens to other people - to people less enlightened or much less fortunate than us - to people whose oppressors, unlike our own familiar leaders, rant crazily in foreign tongues, often while dressed in military costumes.
Tyranny, it is believed, does not happen to us, for it's not really tyranny if its stated goal is our salvation - if it promises to protect us from dangers that we are assured are real, large, and looming. And those few ideological freaks who recklessly insist on calling our saviors "tyrants" do not appreciate the need for quick and decisive action from the top. These freaks should be ignored, and perhaps even forcibly silenced.
Tyranny, again, doesn't happen to us. We, after all, are complying voluntarily with our leaders' commands, knowing that these are for our own good. If we were suffering the oppression of tyrants, we'd resist. We are, don't forget, a proud people. We are enlightened, democratic, and free. And so because the vast majority of us are not resisting our leaders' current rule, this rule cannot possibly be tyrannical. Q.E.D.
Our leaders, in short, aren't tyrants. They're public servants who we must trust if we are to be saved.
Or, so all who are tyrannized conclude.
Hygiene Socialism Is Tyranny
Because tyranny always enjoys its victims' widespread support, most people living under it are unaware of their ghastly fate. And so it is with today's tyranny of hygiene socialism. Believing that Covid-19 lockdown orders, mask mandates, and school closings are necessary to prevent unspeakable loss of life, people obey. This is no time to allow nitpicking about the rule of law, or about concerns with matters other than Covid, to obstruct our leaders' valiant efforts to save us!
Yet as with all tyranny, the truth will eventually emerge. In the future, people's eyes will open to the exaggerations, half-truths, distortions, and outright lies used to excuse today's tyrannical restrictions. Someday people will look back on 2020 and see it as a year in which tyranny darkened the globe.
Our children and grandchildren will shake their heads in amazement that the adults - the "adults" - of 2020 were so credulous as to fall for the hysterical overstatements and the deceits and duplicity used to justify this tyranny. They will be aghast that in 2020 so many reporters, pundits, and politicians swallowed whole and without question the over-the-top predictions of mad scientists such as Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College colleagues. The jaws of our progeny will drop from puzzlement when they ponder the news media's atrociously poor and biased "reporting" on Covid-19. And our descendants will simply resign themselves to being unable to understand fully how and why we allowed ourselves to be engulfed by such tyranny.
And then our children and grandchildren will pat each other on the back, confidently relieved by their knowing that they will never be so gullible as were those of us in 2020.
About the Author:
Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research and with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University. He is the author of the books The Essential Hayek, Globalization, Hypocrites and Half-Wits, and his articles appear in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, US News & World Report as well as numerous scholarly journals. He writes a blog called Cafe Hayek and a regular column on economics for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Reader Comments
This is exactly what will happen and they will be to arrogant to realize it is already happening to them again. It's exactly whats happening now. The huge arrogance and ignorance of the human ego is unbeleivable
One should read Madison's Convention notes, and the Anti-Federalist papers. Same thing here too. First thing Georgie boy did in office was sic Alexander after the homesteaders on "his" land for not paying the whiskey tax.
Philosophical historians had worked out a regular life cycle, or more properly death cycle, of republics. Manhood gave way to effeminacy, republican liberty to licentiousness. Licentiousness, in turn, degenerated into anarchy, and anarchy inevitably led to tyranny.” p70-1 Novus Ordo Seclorum
“The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.” --Lord Acton
“[Democracy] Conceived as the foundation of liberty, it paves the way for tyranny. Born for the purpose of standing as a bulwark against Power, it ends by providing Power with the finest soil it has ever had in which to spread itself over the social field.” --Bertrand de Jouvenal
“Substantially all the tyranny and robbery and crime that governments have ever committed – and they have either themselves committed, or licensed others to commit, nearly all that have ever been committed in the world by anybody – have been committed by them under the pretence of making laws. Some man, or some body of men, have claimed the right, or usurped the power, of making laws, and compelling other men to obey; thus setting up their own will, and enforcing it, in place of that natural law, or natural principle, which says that no man or body of men can rightfully exercise any arbitrary power whatever over the persons or property of other men.” p1 Against Women Suffrage
Eric Hoffer, the American hobo philosopher wrote that there is a bit of tyranny in each of us. This is nowhere more blatantly manifest than in the implementation of Government:
Webster:
1 a) the exercise of authority over a state, district, organization, institution, etc.; direction; control; rule; management b) the right, function, or power of governing
2 a) a system of ruling, controlling, etc. b) an established system of political administration by which a nation, state, district, etc. is governed
Everybody wants to tell somebody else what to do. How to behave. And, as Bastiat pointed out, government quickly turns to converting the Law into plundering everyone in the name of their safety.
can I get a hell yeah! go klokman go! yee, haa, bitches!
**
King Crimson 21st Century Schizoid Man [Link]
There are plenty of people right now to whom the truth has already emerged. So what Boudreaux must mean is the mainstream of academia, media, and government will recognize the truth. These sectors are dominated by liars. Why does Boudreaux think these sectors will be repopulated by normal, decent human beings interested in the truth? His articles are brilliant, I wish he'd explain how and why this will happen. I'm not convinced in the least.
So why is he still employed at an American university? Doesn't it seem like student and faculty activists, with the administration's blessing and full support, would have forced him out a long time ago? I see he is "former" chair of the economics department. Maybe for now they settled for evicting him from the chairmanship? I'm confused.
They made themseves believe they do good, while committing the worst crimes.
"the amerikan world view is nihilism with a happy ending". Alan Bloom
RC
Life is never without problems and obstacles. It becomes a matter of how many are the problems and how big are the obstacles; and how much do these interfere with each of us achieving a reasonable amount of satisfaction, and/or keep us from realizing what we each feel our self-worth, our intrinsic value to be.
But yeah, I think the super-hero complex, the obsession we humans have with applying to ourselves all the latest trends in science and technology, is an idea that has about run its total and complete--and now--virtually useless and hyper-redundant, self-defeating course.
Time for a smaller set of problems and obstacles. Time again for a more human, less superhero, application.
Otherwise, it is over.
And it is just about over.
Tyranny doesn't work, super duper technological hero tyranny works even less, producing only zombies.
Look around.
Let us not search for, nor believe in, this type of 'hero' anymore.
Thanks, all.
ned,
out
Rather than always be clamoring and arguing and pledging for a system that 'works', just look at what doesn't work and avoid that.
Helps to eliminate zombies, too.
People start solving their problems, instead.
Seriously.
Have a nice day.
ned,
OUT
1) A climate change tyranny whose agenda will that we must travel much less and stop using fossil fuels, especially oil.
2) A food based tyranny whose agenda will be that we must eat much less meat.
3) A transport based tyranny whose agenda will be that we must stop driving cars as they are environmentally costly to make, used inefficiently, and deadly dangerous when driven by humans.
4) A money based tyranny whose agenda will be that we must use central banks and their associated digital currencies and live on Universal Basic Income.
The Covid tyranny is a home and body based tyranny whose agenda is that we must stay at home and have our bodies violated with gene altering ‘vaccines’.