Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Big_Bird]

AC Grayling:

No. The seductive myth is that in times of crises and stress, people need a firm hand and a clear eye; some say that in unstable pluralisms such as former Iraq and Yugoslavia, an iron hand is the only way to keep peace between factions, ethnicities and religious groupings. But the old familiar points about power are no less true for being so: absolute power corrupts, as Acton said; and as Brutus says in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, power becomes destructive when it disjoins itself from remorse. And this disjunction is an inevitability given the way that power lifts its wielders away from their roots, away from others, away from realities; when all they hear comes from the lips of the fearful and sycophantic; when they can easily express their irritation at obstacles, and can brush aside those who disagree and gainsay. Two things above all are essential for protecting against the risk of dictatorship: a free press, and an independent judiciary.

AC Grayling is professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Brian Eno:

"Dictator" is an automatically pejorative word. "Autocrat" is more neutral. There are many sorts of autocrats: from those who seek to control everything entirely in their personal interests to those who seriously care about those under their charge. Those latter can have the interests of the whole community in mind, and they can be "democratic" in the sense that they pay attention to the feedback they get from their people: indeed many tribal and clan systems of government are like this. Leaders are considered "wise" or "good" when they are able to synthesise what they hear about the state of the world and arrive at a decision which works well for most people.

The biggest objection to autocrats is not that they're automatically bad but that you can't get rid of them easily if they turn out to be. However, since the outcomes of our "democratic" elections are increasingly shaped by lobbyists, conditional campaign contributions and partisan media, it could be argued that we also aren't able to get rid of the real powers behind the throne, but just to occasionally change its occupant.

Brian Eno is a musician and a founding member of the Long Now Foundation.

Rizwan Ahmed:

Compared to a decently functioning democracy, probably not. Compared to a nation disintegrating under civil war and sectarian strife? Maybe. You'd have to ask an Iraqi.
If we look at Musharraf in Pakistan, you can say he has improved the economy and allowed much greater press freedoms than his "democratic" predecessors, who had also ransacked the public coffers.

Even if he is the best of a bad range of options for now from the point of view of most Pakistanis, dictatorship skews the political system and makes the prospect of a functioning democracy in the future even harder. So of course dictatorship's never ideal as a system, and in principle I'd probably choose a messier democracy.

But people living in poor and unstable countries might tell you there are worse things than living under a dictatorship, and often more pressing problems than simply living under a democracy wouldn't necessarily solve.

Rizwan Ahmed is an actor and musician.

Shami Chakrabarti:

Dictatorship is an obvious evil. Some will say that this evil is sometimes necessary, that some societies "are not ready" for democracy, or that some dictators are benign. Those who would deny universal suffrage abroad say little different from those who denied it at home not so many years ago. Their exotic prejudices must be met by questioning who and what government is for. Progress may be slow if not unbearably painful. Self-evidently democracy cannot be proclaimed down the barrel of a gun. Ultimately however, democracy generally brings more peace, prosperity and individual human dignity.

Shami Chakrabarti is director of Liberty.

Camille Paglia:

Virtually all of the world's major archaeological zones, except for Athens, were originally produced by some version of dictatorship. From Karnak and Babylon to Angkor Wat and Chichen Itza, autocratic authority provided the organisational system for massive public works projects that glorified the state. Under such regimes, of course, individualism was stifled, and there were no basic civil liberties. But as a social principle, centralisation was enormously consequential, marking human progress out of the parochial fiefdoms of family and clan.

Camille Paglia is professor of humanities and media studies at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Galen Strawson:

The possibility is not excluded by human nature, but it's probably better on average to have a dictator who achieves supremacy by force of arms rather than by political advancement. This is because it's almost impossibly hard for a decent person to reach the top by political means.

Galen Strawson is professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading.

DBC Pierre:

You don't have to travel far to see that political boundaries ill-fit the new world. Never in history have more people been in armed conflict, mostly over territory; seismic shifts among tiny cultural plates. I feel it's not a question of good dictators, but least worst: they're a naturally occurring phenomenon, organic, and having gained power, are often by definition the only ones who will maintain order.

Also, we imagine democracy can be sold off-the-rack, when the history and culture of a place won't yet support it. Take Iraq's implosion after Saddam. One good thing about dictatorships: you know exactly where you stand. Anyway, a purely academic question, as we Anglos traditionally support any dictator who kisses arse.

DBC Pierre is an author best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel Vernon God Little.

[Gopher]

My usual objections against purists and their absolutist either "good" or "bad" dichotomies on most things aside, you are dealing with especially-difficult moving-targets here, Big_Bird.

I imagine you are asking whether dictators are either good or bad vis-a-vis those who they rule and must suffer them -- and not from an international-affairs perspective where different governments, corporations, and NGOs work with, ignore, or work against dictators on a case-by-case basis every day, and to varying degrees, of course, usually with common-interests and other utility-oriented goals and not morality in mind -- at least not necessarily.

Finally, what exactly is "a dictator?" I think it means different things to different people. I have heard many people erroneously called "dictator" or "tyrant" -- in American politics, for example, from the Federalists to Lincoln to FDR to W. Bush. While I understand what their opponents want to say, I do not believe that any of them were "dictators," however.

[contrarian]

He who governs best, is he who governs least.

If everyone was kind and loving anarchy is the best system.

But the accumulation of power even to be a bit autocratic is just plain wrong.

[igotthisguitar]

There have long been more than a few 'benevolent' dictators within the ranks of the western political hierarchy.

Bureaucratic cheques & balances.

True 'democracy' would witness PR (proportional representation).

Other than a few nations in Europe, this the west simply does not have

[cbclark4]

[cbclark4]

Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed a similar sentiment in his essay �Politics:� �Hence the less government we have the better�the fewer laws and the less confided power.��Essays: Second Series, in The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 1, p. 302 (1929).

On Anarchy

,��That government is best which governs not at all;� and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Civil Disobedience, first paragraph, Walden and Civil Disobedience, ed. Owen Thomas, p. 224 (1966). This essay was first published in 1849.

Anarchy requires that all people have good manners. -- Jubal Harshaw

[cbclark4]

"Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so
do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great
the latter may be."

Mohandas Gandhi

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. "

Mohandas Gandhi

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the
homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of
totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? "

Mohandas Gandhi

[cbclark4]

"Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement. "

Nelson Mandella


A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Benjamin Disraeli

[cbclark4]

"When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom
there will be no state. "

Vladimir Lenin

[Pluto]

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you�re a mile away and you have their shoes.


- Jack Handy

[igotthisguitar]

[SPINOZA]

I'm a fan of Grayling and obviously he'd kick my ass in a debate, but I found this logically fallacious....

"No. The (1) seductive myth is that in times of crises and stress, people need a firm hand and a clear eye; some say that in unstable pluralisms such as former Iraq and Yugoslavia, an iron hand is the only way to keep peace between factions, ethnicities and religious groupings. (2) But the old familiar points about power are no less true for being so: absolute power corrupts....."

(1) Is it a seductive myth? His description of Iraq seduced me into believing, perhaps, it isn't merely a seductive myth!
(2) Red herring. Grayling simply changes the topic of conversation rather than provide an argument against the claim he identified in (1). That power corrupts does not falsify the claim that dictatorships are a success, or the least worst, in an Iraq scenario (keeping peace between factions, ethnicities and religious groupings)....

[igotthisguitar]

Chicago Police Again Mired In Scandal
By MIKE ROBINSON, Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 30, 7:04 PM ET

CHICAGO - Videotapes of angry officers savagely beating civilians and charges that a murder plot was hatched within an elite special operations unit have Chicago's troubled police department reeling again.



Adding to the department's woes is word from federal prosecutors that they are investigating claims that homicide detectives tortured suspects into confessing to murders that landed them on death row in the 1980s.

Not since club-swinging cops in baby-blue helmets chased demonstrators through clouds of pepper gas at the 1968 Democratic National Convention have Chicago police been so awash in trouble

CONT'D ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070930/ap_on_re_us/police_scandals (etc)

[Big_Bird]

[thiophene]

I think any leader taking too much time wanting power for their country (which let's face it is always an excuse for themselves gaining power) is not good.