Is Gen Z’s desire to be ruled by a dictator rational?

If surveys are to be believed, Generation Z(oomer), aged roughly between thirteen and twenty-eight, have expressed a desire to be ruled by a dictator. That term derives from the Latin dictator, which referred to an official given absolute power (i.e. he was above the law) for a fixed term to do whatever he thought necessary to deal with a clearly identified problem.

Take the famous example of Cincinnatus. A soldier of repute and a very able ex-consul, he had been left penniless by paying off a debt incurred by his son, and was living the life of a peasant “in a deserted hovel across the Tiber, like a banished man.” In 458 BC he was at his plow when he was asked to put on his toga and attend the Senate. There he was invited to become dictator for six months to do whatever was required to defeat an enemy that was threatening Rome’s very existence.

The historian Livy commented that the plebs were concerned about the amount of power theoretically placed in the hands of one man, because they were fighting a political battle against the ruling “patrician” class to have some sort of say in the running of the state. In the event, they need not have worried. Cincinnatus fulfilled his remit in fifteen days and promptly returned to his hovel.

Romans continued to appoint dictators (some ninety in all) to deal with a whole variety of problems, e.g. when the plebs, feeling they were being unfairly treated, refused to sign up for military service, and when one Spurius Maelius was accused of winning popularity among the plebs by selling grain at a low price during a serious famine, with a view to making himself king. During the collapse of the Roman Republic in the first century BC, the military dynast Sulla persuaded the Senate to make him dictator to restore the constitution, which he did before retiring into private life. But Julius Caesar made himself dictator perpetuus — a contradiction in terms for a Roman, but a foretaste of the emperors.

And of the modern dictator, let Gen Z reflect that such a one is not a democrat and is by definition immune to the law. He therefore has absolute power to deny your freedoms while enjoying his own, for as long as he is able.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2025 World edition.