When you write "evil dictator", you mean that a dictator could not be evil. This is hugely wrong. Dictatorship contains evil.
I appreciate your effort to invite people to learn from history instead of just rejecting a portion of it. But this is a black-and-white matter: he chose to be a dictator, and he was wrong. Subsequent crimes and economics theories are less important once you keep people from choosing their fate/government.
I guess it's pretty much black and white for most of us if for life's duration we're forced to do what someone tells us to do. If permitted, we could do a few polls and discover whether such sanctions are regarded by those affected as 'consensus reality'.
'Evil' has religious overtones but it's not a bad word to sum up such a situation.
Even in democracies, we're forced to do what our govt tells us to do, or not do. Soft drugs and alcohol are the perfect example of someone's opinion forced down our throats. the fact that some drugs are harness but illegal while others are harmful but legal.
Americans couldn't travel to Cuba. During the cold war, USSR. Americans couldn't freely express socialist ideas never mind communist ones. This in a democracy. I don't really see a big difference. The peculiarities of Cuba can be understood in its geopolitical context.
No, daylight saving is the perfect example of someone's opinion forced upon us.
There is a general case to be made for regulating toxic substances and the examples given are of people arguing over if particular substances really are toxic enough.
No, a dictator can be benevolent. What if a foreign government destroys your country, the populace is largely uneducated and you have the power to reinstitute order in to then transition to a government by and for the people? The US, under Obama, destroyed Libya, what if someone with genuine good intentions would have seized the opportunity in order to prevent what did become reality, that all the people got was a puppet government. This is partly hypothetical but my point is clear, I hope.
The 'benevolent dictator' is a nice oxymoron, but that's it. For a good and stable dictatorship you really want to control all three powers. What good is a dictator if I can sue him and his clique?
What does 'genuine good intentions' even mean? Whose intentions? His, yours? Mine, or the ones from the guy next door? Who decides what good intentions are?
So you're saying it's a logical impossibility for a dictator to act in the best interest of the people? Does some switch flip where all of a sudden they have no free will?
Don't get me wrong, I think the circumstances that lead to a dictator becoming a dictator make it very unlikely, but to call it impossible just seems crazy to me.
Can we agree, that there's no one 'best interest for the people'? That there's a multitude of different opinions and interests that may be good to some and bad for others, that can be 'good' and still mutually exclusive?
I assume the benevolent dictator would be someone, who allows different opinion, and who allows his policy to be changed by his people. And if they want to be governed by someone else, he would step down, have his own power limited or stripped. That wouldn't be a dictator then.
And you'd still have to deal with his administration which has it's own momentum. The 'benevolent dictator' could simply be replaced (killed) by his own clique with someone more in line with their interests.
Of course it is crazy. Reasonable people will disagree, but most will acknowledge that S. Korea did much, much better under Park Chung Hee than N. Korea under Kim Il Sung during the same period, starting from a worse industrial and economical base. Many Singaporeans rate LKY's legacy hugely net positive, despite dictatorial qualities.
Dictatorship is not a concept that is synonymous with evil. Fabius Maximus was not evil. Coriolanus was not evil. Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, who were effectively dictators during war time, were not particularly evil.
Lincoln had war powers in a civil war but he still remained subject to Congressional oversight, judicial review and he was re-elected. Not quite a dictator in the Roman sense.
FDR had war powers too; he placed Japanese Americans in internment camps. I'm a big FDR fan but that will always be a stain on his legacy.
You're more right with George Washington. He was a commanding general during a civil war and the Continental Congress granted him more powers as he went along. What he's justly famous for, besides winning (or really if you want to be accurate, not losing and outlasting the Brits), was refusing dictatorial powers after the Revolutionary War (like Cincinnatus).
In the sense that both Washington and Lincoln were still subject to the Congress, I can't quite agree they were dictators, certainly not in the ne res publica detrimenti capiat (the Republic suffer no harm) sense where the Congress capitulates to the dictator.
And while I prefer liberal democracies, yes, I agree that:
Dictatorship is not a concept that is synonymous with evil.
Interesting lack of response. I suspect your parent simply isn't familiar with the legacies of people like Lee Kuan Yew or Park Chung Hee, because they haven't been depicted as much in western pop culture and propaganda.
Hello, indeed I'm not familiar with those examples, but it doesn't matter. As long as a government doesn't let his people run truly free elections regularly, that's bad.
Emperors were considered normal at Romans' times; slaves were, too. Luckily, we have learned better since a long time.
Left- or right-wing doesn't matter: dictatorship is an act of violence.
Absolute position are dangerous things without complete knowledge. I mostly agree with your position, and was hoping you had something useful to say about Singapore.
Without it I think that the absolute position is naïve.
What should be added about LKY? He did many wonderful things for his country, but he was also a dictator. As a dictator, he was evil. He wasn't the worst kind of evil, but that was bad. I really can't imagine how intelligent people can still discuss about it.
Being a dictator means forcing your decision to people with different ideas. That's violence. How can it be good? You may say that, in a case like Singapore, the man did more good than evil, but that isn't the point. The dictatorship part was wrong.
By the way, if you need to force your ideas to most of your people, it means that you are not doing a good job as a governor. If you force your ideas to just a minority, than you are being evil just for the sake of being evil.
I appreciate your effort to invite people to learn from history instead of just rejecting a portion of it. But this is a black-and-white matter: he chose to be a dictator, and he was wrong. Subsequent crimes and economics theories are less important once you keep people from choosing their fate/government.