Madmen of History, Sixth Edition. Dr. Donald D. Hook
on ego, without which society would founder. But we must redouble our efforts to construct and maintain minds, souls, and spirits that embody moral responsibility. We need regulated egos; madness is not an attractive alternative.
I remind the readers of this new edition that these chapters are segments of real history that can assist in understanding the necessity of spotting, and later bringing to justice, would-be tyrants, assassins, and fanatics. This book is not fiction, just as neither are the ongoing examples of tyrannical behavior, assassination, and fanaticism seen all about us so frequently in these last thirty years.
An understanding of history is insurance against its repetition. We need to ask ourselves who among the upcoming tyrants exhibits traits of, say, Hitler or Robespierre or Alexander VI. Does the spread of permissiveness and scandal in churches today stand in equally frightening contrast to Torquemada’s unchecked inquisitorial zeal? Are terrorists merely assassins on a large scale or also something more along the lines of Quantrill? Are there ways of curbing religious excesses that lead to massive loss of life? There are helpful clues in the mini-biographies of this book to the recognition and control of dangerous behavior in our day.
You may ask: Why are the “madmen” of today not part of this revised edition? First of all, the use of the word “history” in the title precludes accounts of living persons. Secondly, there are cogent reasons for not writing in detail about persons still living, not the least of which is a lack of perspective. But do note the list of budding madmen that I have set down and watch to see how many become enshrined in my next Madmen of History.
Donald D. Hook
July 2005
Introduction to the 2008 Edition
This book has been republished at least every 10 years since its first appearance in 1976. That pace has represented a sort of “watchful waiting,” as they say in medicine, for this is a book of history, not current events, and it often takes a long time for tyrants to arise and seize power. It takes even longer for these perpetrators of misery and repression to arouse sufficient revulsion among their own people and, eventually, other nations, that their removal from prominence is undertaken, their punishment or demise assured, and their place in infamy recorded. A few such tyrants have come and gone to their punishment since the monstrous acts of September 11, 2001 against the United States, and some have inevitably arisen to take their places. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one. Others, such as Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong II, and Robert Mugabe hold out doggedly, while still others, such as Fidel Castro and the minions of Yasser Arafat have merely slipped into the background for the time being.
One particularly monstrous tyrant, Dinko Šakić, ruler of Croatia during its alliance with Nazi Germany, stunned even Nazi officials when they toured his concentration camp, Jasenovac, during the Holocaust and discovered that his staff had designed a special knife for slitting throats and were using blowtorches to torture inmates while shooting others through the head just for smiling. When convicted of his hideous crimes, he applauded and laughed. On July 20, 2008 he died in a Zagreb prison hospital at age 86. Another Slavic butcher, Radovan Karadžić, a Serbian psychiatrist accused of approving a campaign responsible for murdering 200,000 civilian Bosnian Muslims and Croats, the expulsion of 1.5 million others, and the rape of about 20,00 women, was arrested in a Belgrade cafe in July 2008 while in disguise and strumming a guitar and singing some maudlin songs he had written about Serbian nationalism. You might say he was a kind of ethnic vacuum cleaner.
Most notable among those permanently removed was Saddam Hussein. Dressed in black trousers, an ivory white shirt, and a black overcoat and wearing highly polished black shoes, with his hair dyed coal black and his white beard carefully trimmed, he stood and waited calmly for the snap of the thick yellow noose around his neck, amid insulting cries from his Shiite enemies assembled there to watch his execution. Entreating Allah, Saddam was defiant to the end, which came, after a long search and a circus-like trial, in Baghdad during the pre-dawn hours of December 30,2006. Sic semper tyrannis.
There will surely be more to come—not only tyrants but assassins, religious fanatics, and assorted misfits. We have only to wait and see what they look and sound like and then summon the courage to dispatch them. They are hard at work now, and we need to be prepared.
Donald D. Hook
Summer 2008
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