Words change meaning over time. When the founders of our republic called King George a tyrant in the Declaration of Independence, they were relying on a commonly understood reference from ancient Greece that all educated people of their time understood. Tyranny was not bad government. It could be good government. But the tyrant was a pervert. Oedipus was the paradigm. We call the play "Oedipus Rex" but that is Latin. The Greek title was "Oedipous Tyrannos." But he was not alone. Dirty jokes were told about Peisistratos, Tyrant of Athens.

In the Greek Dark Ages 1100 to 700 BCE kings ruled, as they had from time immemorial. Then came a revolution. The Phoenicians brought commerce and writing. And something else came, too. Buddha, Thales, and Confucius lived (born or died) within 100 years of each other.

In Ionia of the Greek world, 13 colonies experienced a multifaceted revolution. Philosophy supplanted religion. Writing replaced speech. Commerce overshadowed farming. Coins were invented. Tyrants were chosen. The citizens of the town gave control of the business affairs of the state to successful men on the rise. Touting Pythagoras, Carl Sagan denounced Polycrates, the Tyrant of Samos as a "caterer." Indeed he was. Polycrates of Samos was a successful businessman who took over management of the town.

Tyranny led to oligarchy. The decision-makers could not find a manager, so they ruled by committee. Oligarchy led to democracy: everyone with standing gets in. It happened as fast as three generations, but no more than three lifetimes, not less than 700 BCE to 550 BCE across the Greek world. Once democracy, coinage, writing, philosophy, and commerce were the norm, tyrants fell into the shadows and tyrannicide was heralded.

The Thirty Tyrants of Athens, was in fact an oligarchy in the wake of the Peloponnesian War that killed rich people and seized their property.

Dictatorship was a constitutional office of the Roman Republic. In times of crisis when the senate (not the only legislative or judicial assembly but the overarching one) was divided, the senate empowered one person of good character to command. The paradigm was Cincinnatus for whom veterans of the American Revolution named their new settlement of Cincinnati, Ohio. Twice Cincinnatus took charge; and twice he returned to his farm.

The dictators of the 1930s, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Metaxas, Franco, and others, were proclaimed only to be guiding their nations through temporary crises. In the USA nothing in the Constitution prevented Roosevelt's third and fourth terms. Consider that in the UK, Churchill was turned out as soon as the war was won. (Rationing, for instance of chocolate, continued for another ten years.) In theory, at least, a democratic republic can appoint a dictator to guide the ship of state through the shoals of crisis.

Generally, we all hate dictators and tyrants. I assert that that is a prejudice, foisted on those not deeply educated by a public education system in service to democracy.

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