# Are there any "good" dictators? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 23, 2003, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522 "2003-03-23T06:54:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2003, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/41 "2003-03-23T22:36:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \* > \*\*What about King Boris of Bulgaria, father of the current Prime Minister (and former King) was also a royal dictator who was rather benevolent. \*\* A hijack here. What should I call Simeon Saxocoberg (I’m translating his last name into its’ English equivilent because I’d rather not try to spell it), the aforementioned PM? Would he be “Your Highness”, or would it be something else? (BTW, I made an error in my above post. Horthy took control of Hungary in 1920, not 1919.) ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/42 "2003-03-24T00:45:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DesertGeezer \* > \*\*The Pope may be a “dictator” within the organization of his own church. But his “dicta” are not supported throughout the world, or even within the Vatican, by soldiers. Those Swiss guys in the funny tutus are protectors, not enforcers. He may very well threaten dissenters with punishment hereafter, but he doesn’t threaten anyone’s life here and now. His “rule” depends upon people’s willingness to follow, rather than on their fear not to (at least in a temporal sense). > > Now, as to whether he’s a “good” dicatator…well, YMMV. \*\* Maybe so. My take though, is that children are taught from an early age that the only way to avoid the fires of hell is through Christ and the only way to Christ is through the Holy Mother Church. Then those who don’t follow the dictates of the Church, delivered through the Pope, are threatened with the withdrawal of the protection of the Church. I’m not sure I call that benevolent. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/43 "2003-03-24T01:07:27Z")
I’m not sure. (His surname would be Saxe-Coburg, I believe, or technically Wettin). ---
**Author:** ![Melan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Melan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melan)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/44 "2003-03-26T15:48:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Governor Quinn \* > \*\*There aren’t really any “good” dictators (and, hlujarn, Freedom House puts Castro as one of the worst dictators of modern times, if not of all time), though Admiral Horthy, Regent of Hungary from 1919 to 1944, did a decent job at stabilizing the country. \*\* In the interest of fairness, I have to add that Admiral Horthy had very little actual power beyond symbolic - much like the British Queen, he ruled but didn’t really govern. Hungary at the time was quasi-parlamentary, somewhere between a light authoritarian dictatorship and a parliamentary democracy. (Somewhat like Mannerheim of Finland) Given the time frame and circumstances he operated in, “could have been better, could have been worse” comes to my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/45 "2003-03-26T16:12:58Z")
[Perikles](http://www.in2greece.com/english/historymyth/history/ancient/pericles.htm) might qualify. While he was technically elected, I recall some of his elections rather resembled that of… some recent ones I could name. He was effectively a tyrant, but a beloved, elected one. As such, he presided over Greece’s golden age, when Socrates, Aristophanes, Hippocrates, Herotodus, and Euripides were at the peak of their creative powers. Of course, he also invited the Peloponnesian war, the plague which took his own life, and the seeds of the destruction of Athens as a major power. His detractors purportedly called him “[onion-head](http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/worldhis/Hist11h.html)” behind his back, and because his own reputation was unassailable, his associates were often mercilessly attacked by mud-slingers. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/46 "2003-03-26T16:42:06Z")
Ataturk. ---
**Author:** ![manwithaplan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@manwithaplan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manwithaplan)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/47 "2003-03-26T16:57:19Z")
Tito was no saint but at least he avoided the worst excesses of Eastern Bloc regimes, stood aloof from the Soviet Union and held back the ethnic shitstorm which brought about Yugoslavia’s collapse. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/48 "2003-03-26T19:58:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aahala \* > **Not a country of course, but the Pope could be considered a good dictator.** Actually, IIRC Vatican City is considered to be soveriegn soil, so in a sense you’re right – the Pope is a dictator of a (very small) country. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DesertGeezer \* > **The Pope may be a “dictator” within the organization of his own church. But his “dicta” are not supported throughout the world, or even within the Vatican, by soldiers. Those Swiss guys in the funny tutus are protectors, not enforcers. He may very well threaten dissenters with punishment hereafter, but he doesn’t threaten anyone’s life here and now. His “rule” depends upon people’s willingness to follow, rather than on their fear not to (at least in a temporal sense).** Ah, yes – “how many divisions does the Pope have?” It isn’t the presence of soldiers that makes a nation, but recognition by other nation-states (having soldiers helps in that regard, obviously). And wouldn’t the Vatican City police itself? Or does Rome provide law enforcement to the city? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/49 "2003-03-27T01:55:10Z")
Wouldn’t the Pope be more of an absolute monarch, as opposed to a dictator? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/50 "2003-03-27T04:36:35Z")
I haven’t yet found anything negative written about Emperor Asoka of India (c. ~273 - 231BC). Even the [Red Cross](http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList145/6CBFB49E7B5DC540C1256B66005934A0) likes him: > [@](#): > > Emperor Asoka was one of the great moral reformers in the history of civilization and a precocious pioneer of humanitarian values. The impetus for his humanitarian work was derived from his gradual conversion to Buddhism following his witnessing of the carnage and suffering in a war in which his army was victorious. A bold and original reformer who thought on a universal scale and propounded moral values of great nobility, he never claimed to be the inventor of those moral principles; indeed, he took them to be self-evident truths of transcendental validity that stood without need of religious or metaphysical support. They were derived from Buddhism but were distinct from it, and unique to him. The Law of Piety prescribed essentially but not exclusively reverence for superiors; compassion for the ignorant, the suffering, the backward and all living creatures; and acceptance of the goodness of those belonging to other faiths and religions. In short, the Law prescribes righteous relationships between all, including a righteous relationship between the Emperor himself (and his Empress) and others. ---
**Author:** ![GOM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f9b8f/32.png) [@GOM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GOM)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/51 "2003-03-27T16:36:03Z")
FWIW, there are Italians who **still** speak favorably about Mussolini. Personally, I would not call him “good”. Romans 3 (KJV) 10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable;\*\* there is none that doeth good, no, not one.\*\* ---
**Author:** ![voltaire2b](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@voltaire2b](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire2b)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/52 "2003-04-01T05:27:38Z")
What about the theocracy in Tibet before the Chinese takover? (Though I suppose it’s not technically a “theocracy” since Buddhists don’t believe in God – nonetheless, a religious dictatorship) … the people under that government were happy even though the leaders had (did they not? I am not sure) complete control, or at the very least were not elected by the people. I do not have a lot of information about this. Someone might be able to correct / give more insight re: was it a dictatorship? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Calculus\_of\_Logic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aeb1de/32.png) [@The\_Calculus\_of\_Logic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Calculus_of_Logic)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/53 "2003-04-01T08:29:06Z")
[Maybe Pinochet](http://dir.salon.com/col/horo/1998/11/nc_23horo.html) Pinochet overthrew Chile when Allende was turning it into a marxist state. There is no telling what would’ve happened if Chile had become communistic. Maybe it would have been better off, maybe it would have been poor & repressive. Either way, after Pinochet took over, he eventually gave back the democracy 18 years later and Chile is now one of the richest nations in south america with a functioning democracy. I’d say maybe Park from South Korea, but that is only because he spearheaded an attempt to industralize the country. It depends on what you consider important in politics. A dictator who stops even worse dictators from taking over, or from destroying the economy, or violating even more human rights is the lesser of 2 evils. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/54 "2003-04-01T16:09:42Z")
Huey Long? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/55 "2003-04-01T19:07:01Z")
**Calculus** , um, are you kidding? PINOCHET? ---
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/56 "2003-04-01T21:02:06Z")
Hitler was a vegetarian, was kind to animals, hired homosexuals and the handicapped, and listened to The Smiths. ---
**Author:** ![Daoloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@Daoloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daoloth)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/57 "2003-04-01T21:25:51Z")
Castro a [“good dictator?”](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1893554198/qid=1049232383/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7081894-7238243?v=glance&s=books) You must be killing me. He’s behind political oppression and the vast limitation of freedoms. He had hundreds of people arbitrarily executed. He was buddies with the ultimate in gulag experts- the USSR. He exported the “Revolution” to places that never asked for it, such as Angola and Grenada. Hardly any good. ---
**Author:** ![Daoloth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/82dd89/32.png) [@Daoloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daoloth)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/58 "2003-04-01T21:27:23Z")
Uh, kidding me.\* Freudian slip there… ---
**Author:** ![voltaire2b](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@voltaire2b](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire2b)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/59 "2003-04-04T06:48:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Calculus of Logic \* > \*\*[Maybe Pinochet](http://dir.salon.com/col/horo/1998/11/nc_23horo.html) > Pinochet overthrew Chile when Allende was turning it into a marxist state. There is no telling what would’ve happened if Chile had become communistic. Maybe it would have been better off, maybe it would have been poor & repressive. Either way, after Pinochet took over, he eventually gave back the democracy 18 years later and Chile is now one of the richest nations in south america with a functioning democracy. > > It depends on what you consider important in politics. A dictator who stops even worse dictators from taking over, or from destroying the economy, or violating even more human rights is the lesser of 2 evils. \*\* You’re saying money is more important than people being torured to death, babies dropped from helicopters, some say around 4,000 people assasinated or tortured to death? You have a really damaged sense of the meaning of the word “good.” PS Allende did not cause the economy to tank – the United States created an embargo to ruin the economy. Pinochet did not “fix” the economy – it was the US which lifted the embargo which improved the economy. The unrest cited in the article was, unless I am mistaken, also an outgrowth of that same US-manipulated downturn in the economy – the very point of which was to destabilize the country, which it did. It is true that almost every political group (the left included) in Chile contributed to the chaos once things started unraveling. [Information on Pinochet](http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/pinochet.htm) His associates committed an act of terrorism on American soil, setting off a car bomb in Washington DC, killing the Chilean ambassador and an American citizen. The man killed and tortured thousands of his own people and supported terrorists in America, and you say that none of it’s important because of $$. Wake up. PS I have read Pinochet’s own words in Spanish (interviews with him, a small book printed in Chile, available at the Stony Brook Uiniversity Library) and he’s a big fan of Franco and Hitler. Says Hitler is a great man. Pinochet is not a “good” dictator. If you want to compare Allende and Pinochet, try this: [Allende vs. Pinochet (2 to 4,000)](http://www.lakota.clara.net/2chi.html) (the home site is [home page](http://www.lakota.clara.net/) lots of documentation there, including from Spain’s attempt to prosecute him for murdering its citizens {nota bene: they also supply a lengthy document from the Pro-Pinochet camp and then argue against it} the site seems to have fallen out of repair, but you can find more recent information by doing a search at Amnesty International under “Pinochet”) PS Pinochet didn’t just kill his own people, but also Americans, British, Spanish, etc. etc. Your argument, such as it is, it that, well, look at Fidel Castro and Cuba – that is what Chile would have turned into if Allende (the elected president) had remained in power. Even if we accept your thesis, the question remains what allows such people as Fidel Castro in Cuba and similar leaders in Nicaragua to come to power? The very fact that the US had supported bad dictators there in the first place. Perhaps if we had tried to support world democracy in the first place, the world would see fewer dictators who have risen up to counter dictators we placed there before them. It is true that we don’t know what Chile would have been like if it had been left to its own devices, but that is for two reasons: 1) Pinochet took over – and we DO know what that meant; 2) the situation under Allende before he died was NOT Chile under Allende, left to its own devices, but Chile under Allende manipulated by the US to turn it into total chaos. So, even if Pinochet hadn’t taken over, we still would not have had a true test case. ---
**Author:** ![shep\_proudfoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90db22/32.png) [@shep\_proudfoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shep_proudfoot)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2003, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522/60 "2003-04-04T11:07:45Z")
My old school principal was a dictator of his school. His word was God. To the citizens (students), he did not tolerate difference of opinion, did not tolerate freedom of speech (for example, to put a poster on the school walls about an event had to have his personal OK), nor were the people of the school (teachers included) allowed to leave the grounds without permission. Music, gambling, and kissing students were out. Citizens were not allowed weapons. Civil wars (fights) were ruthlessly supressed. He enforced this weekday totalitarian state through stooges (vice-principals), enforcers (teachers), forced work/study cadres (classes),border guards (school policeman, city cops, truant officers), and informers (school secretaries who call the house to see why you are not in school today). The food suppily was bad and centrally controlled, and daring escapes to McDonalds were few and hazerdous. Violations usually included internal or external exile (in school or out of school suspensions. Torture (the using of a board applied to the buttocks) was also used to keep the male citizenry in line, but that tool is no longer used. My principal was actually a strong disciplinarian who cared about education and was a decent person, but when I was 14 to 18 years old, I viewed the High school as an Evil Socialist Empire. SP [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-dictators/163522.md?page=4)