Dictators

1. Dictators are people who always know what is best for everyone else and seek to impose that knowledge, however limited, on others without their consent. The difference between a legitimate ruler and a dictator is the one word “consent”. People who are legitimate rulers rule by the consent of the people; illegitimate rulers or dictators rule without consent.

2. Hence the dictator rejects freedom of choice and the principle of self-determination as the right of every individual member of a society. In effect, a dictator rejects freedom and he assumes the right to live everyone else’s life for them.

3. Dictators can exist in every category of life. We are going to study the eschatological aspect but there are dictators in social life who superimpose their will on the social circle. There are, of course the political dictatorships. We are filled with them in our time in history; they have existed in the past. There are economic dictatorships and religious dictatorships. Some of the latter are great dictatorships such as in the Reformation — Luther, Zwingli, Calvin.

It is one thing for people to present to you their ideas, which is legitimate, but to demand, even with the use of force, that you follow their ideas is something else. The only legitimate dictatorship is parents over children.

4. Dictators refuse to permit you to make your own mistakes. In that sense they are arrogant crusaders seeking to run your life by their standards or lack of standards. This means that in their philosophy of tyranny dictators only want you to make their mistakes from their bad decisions.

5. Therefore dictators are inevitably arrogant, self-righteous. Even the most evil of men, due to their arrogance, have self-righteousness.

6. Because dictators inevitably have to use force and violence to superimpose their will and ideas on the masses they inevitably reject doctrines and principles of establishment related to human freedom and self-determination.

7. Dictators insist on having their own way because their arrogance assumes that their way is infinitely superior. For this reason dictators assume both perfection and infallibility either in themselves or the system that created them.

8. Consequently, dictators can only exist, function and succeed in the atmosphere of the cosmic system of Satan. That means the historical environment where the cosmic system has major impact.

9. In other words, a maximum number of people living in the cosmic system create a vacuum for the rise of a dictatorship, while only the pivot of mature believers creates the environment for the dynamic function of human freedom. Human freedom isn’t always dynamic but when it is it is because of a pivot of mature believers. Freedom, like any other system, can be abused.