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"What is the purpose of political life? Is it meant to protect our rights as individuals, leaving us free to work hard and prosper, protected from illegal infringements on our liberty, free to do as we please in our private lives so long as others are not harmed, including the freedom to ignore politics and public life altogether? That is the recipe for the classical liberalism of Locke, Montesquieu and their heirs including the American Founders for good government: Secure the maximum net material gain for every member of the social contract to enable them to live in comfort and otherwise get out of the way - for as Jefferson put it, that government is best which governs least. Government is not about teaching people how to be virtuous - that is a matter for individual choice. Politics is about means, not ends. As Madison wrote, the sources of factional strife are sewn into human nature. Their causes cannot be removed, but their harmful effects can be controlled by the social contract"--

The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is a permanent threat by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, to the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of Man, leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age including the Tudors and 'enlightened despots' such as Peter the Great. The book explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how it changes with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution. Stimulating and enlightening, Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world.

Cover; Title page; Copyright information; Table of contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: The Strange Career of Tyranny; The Three Faces of Tyranny; The Ancient and Modern Understandings of Tyranny; Tyrants in Waiting: Terrorism and the Righteous Anger of Young Men; The Beautification of Violence; The Challenge of Tyranny in Today's World; Part One The Rage of Achilles: From Homeric Heroes to Lord and God of the World; Homeric Kings and Heroes; Kings of the World: Universal Monarchy; Tyranny or Republic? The Emergence of the West; The Greatest Republic.

"This is the first comprehensive exploration of ancient and modern tyranny in the history of political thought"--

This is the first comprehensive exploration of ancient and modern tyranny in the history of political thought. Waller R. Newell argues that modern tyranny and statecraft differ fundamentally from the classical understanding. Newell demonstrates a historical shift in emphasis from the classical thinkers' stress on the virtuous character of rulers and the need for civic education to the modern emphasis on impersonal institutions and cold-blooded political method. By diagnosing the varieties of tyranny from erotic voluptuaries like Nero, the steely determination of reforming conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and modernizing despots such as Napoleon and Ataturk to the collectivist revolutions of the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis and Khmer Rouge, Newell shows how tyranny is every bit as dangerous to free democratic societies today as it was in the past

Preface VII. - 1. In the Mirror of Antiquity: The Problem of American Empire 3. - 2. Democracy and Empire: The Case of Athens Laurie 20. - 3. Empire by Invitation of Domination? The Difference between Hemonia and Arkhe 41. - 4. The Freedom to Rule: Athenian Imperialism and Democratic Masculinity 54. - 5. Liberty and Empire, with the Benefit of Limited Hindsight - or What Herodotus of Halicarnassus Saw 67. - 6. Empire and the Eclipse of Politics 77. - 7. Imperial Compulsions 96. - 8. Rome and the Hellenistic World: Masculinity and Militarism, Monarchy and Republic 114. - 9. Imperial Power in the Roman Republic 127. - 10. The Rise of Global Power and the Music of the Spheres: Philosophy and History in Cicero's De Re Publica 147. - 11. Machiavelli's Model of a Liberal Empire: The Evolution of Rome 164. - 12. Post-9/11 Evocations of Empire in Light of Eric Voegelin's Political Science 185. - 13. Athens as Hamlet: The Irresolute Empire 215