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• n  dominance through threat of punishment and violence
• n  a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)

• De Tocqueville translated adventure into "individualism," and suspected it would lead to despotism.
• Soviet despotism has attained a rapid rate of industrialization, Dulles conceded, partly due to the use of forced labor.
• One flaw in Webster's abstract definitions: areas of despotism can exist in a democracy, and he doesn't say so.

• absolutism
• tyranny
• dictatorship
• authoritarianism
• Caesarism
• monocracy
• one-man rule
• shogunate
• Stalinism
• totalitarianism

News & Articles

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• A quote for the 4th
  By Tribune-Review “Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.” Thomas Jefferson ...
  July 4, 2013 - The Mckeesport Daily News

Quotes

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• Osama bin Laden in Monsters and Critics.com
  America has put on a new face, but its heart full of hate, mind drowning in greed, and spirit which spreads evil, murder, repression and despotism continue to be the same as always,al-Zawahri stated.
• John Roberts in Seattle Post Intelligencer
  When foreign nations discard despotism and undertake to reform their judicial systems,Roberts wrote, "they look to the United States judiciary as the model for securing the rule of law."
• Thomas Jefferson in The Chattanoogan
  And here come those pesky chains, which are indeed nowhere in the Constitution; Thomas Jefferson warned us that "confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him...