It is now much harder to become and remain an absolute tyrant. Certainly they exist and persist. But many minor contenders for this infamous title and status as super villain have failed recently.
For all their murderous depravity and egotistical hubris, Sadaam, Mubarak, Gaddaffi, Milosevic, were all small fry compared to their antecedents. Now all have vanished. Few mourn them. Their remaining compatriots are increasingly vulnerable and isolated. The North Korean and Iranian regimes, the military junta in Burma, as ugly as they are, are hardly in the league of their predecessors.
There are many social and historical reasons for this changed sense of what human society will tolerate. Changed technologies bring atrocities immediately to our attention, as recent vision of events in Syria attest. Larger populations and wider immigration flows have made national borders more porous, allowing ideas of democracy, justice, and a sense of common humanity to be transmitted more readily, defying the old closed-state apparatus of oppression that once kept peoples and ethnic communities under tight restraint.
I write this in response to the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech made by Aung San Suu Kyi in Norway recently. After 21 years of harassment, intimidation and house arrest, this remarkable woman has finally been able to receive her prize and speak freely to a world that cares deeply for her message.
What is most remarkable is how gracious and calm she appears. Make no mistake, she has suffered greatly. Like Nelson Mandela she seems impossibly forgiving. I don't know what kept Mandela intact. Listening to Suu Kyi's speech, it is evident that what has sustained her are the ethical and moral truths of Theravadan Buddhist thought, or Dhamma.
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