despotism

Foreign policy becomes an instrument of naked personal despotism, with favors bestowed on those who burnish the leader’s vanity, and yanked away from those who decline to do so.

Can that Huntington Beach teach the rest of us a thing — or thirty — not just about how to stand up to despotism, but how to beat it back?

But “of all the forms democratic despotism could take,” Tocqueville continues, “the worst would be to turn over all the powers of government to the hands of an irresponsible person.”

So they bequeathed us the separation of powers and the associated checks and balances ideally expected to counter such despotism.

Mr. Turk told the crowd that the elder Assad’s regime had “relied on terror” and called Bashar’s rule “illegitimate,” saying it represented “despotism.”