Saruman's use of "Ruffians" to tyrannise the Shire has been compared to the Nazis' handling of dissent, here by marching people off to an internment camp in Serbia. Various commentators have noted that the chapter has political overtones. The critic Jerome Donnelly suggests that the chapter is a satire, of a more serious kind than the knockabout "comedy of manners" at the start of The Hobbit. Plank calls it a caricature of fascism.
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The notion that, in a democracy, the greatest concern is that the majority will tyrannise and exploit diverse smaller interests, has been criticised by Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action, who argues instead that narrow and well organised minorities are more likely to assert their interests over those of the majority. Olson argues that when the benefits of political action (e.g., lobbying) are spread over fewer agents, there is a stronger individual incentive to contribute to that political activity. Narrow groups, especially those who can reward active participation to their group goals, might therefore be able to dominate or distort political process, a process studied in public choice theory.
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A few years later, Torak's father was named the Wolf mage, but Tenris wasn't named Seal mage. Tenris disappeared with bitterness, but years later he reappeared, joining the Soul-Eaters, who were originally not evil and called the Healers. Then when the great fire broke out, Tenris was badly burnt and the fire scorched lungs and his left hand was burnt so badly that it was ‘shaped like a claw’. Fin-Kedinn tells Torak that he can either use his spirit walking ability to either make the Soul-Eaters more powerful than they ever dreamed to be and tyrannise the forest, or Torak could destroy them completely.
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The doctrine of the lesser magistrate was first popularized in a simpler form by John Calvin, who wrote that private Christians must submit to the ruling authorities, but there may be "popular magistrates" who have "been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings". When these magistrates "connive at kings when they tyrannise and insult over the humbler of the people" they "fraudulently betray the liberty of the people" when God has appointed them guardians of that liberty.John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.xx.31. A more elaborate doctrine of the lesser magistrate was first employed in the Lutheran Magdeburg Confession of 1550, which argued that the "subordinate powers" in a state, faced with the situation where the "supreme power" is working to destroy true religion, may go further than non-cooperation with the supreme power and assist the faithful to resist.
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A philosophical critique of charity can be found in Oscar Wilde's essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, where he calls it "a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution . . . usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over [the poor's] private lives", as well as a remedy that prolongs the "disease" of poverty, rather than curing it. Wilde's thoughts are cited with approval by Slavoj Žižek, and the Slovenian thinker adds his description of the effect of charity on the charitable: Friedrich Engels, in his 1845 treatise on the condition of the working class in England, points out that charitable giving, whether by governments or individuals, is often seen by the givers as a means to conceal suffering that is unpleasant to see. Engels quotes from a letter to the editor of an English newspaper who complains that ::streets are haunted by swarms of beggars, who try to awaken the pity of the passers-by in a most shameless and annoying manner, by exposing their tattered clothing, sickly aspect, and disgusting wounds and deformities.
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The Scottish writer and merchant John Parish Robertson, who lived in Paraguay and worked closely with de Francia, mentions in his book Francia's Reign of Terror, Being the Continuation of Letters On Paraguay, that Tevego "is a place, of the atmosphere is one great mass of malaria, and the heat suffocating, - where the surrounding country is uninterrupted marsh - where venomous insects and reptiles abound, - and where the fiercest and yet unsubdued tribes of Indians are making continual in-roads. No huts but those constructed in the boughs of trees, or by a few hides and mats, are to be seen; no provisions are to be obtained but those from the Portuguese, or the chase; and no protection is to be afforded but that of a small guard of militia, to awe and tyrannise of the colonists. Many would prefer confinement in the public prison to banishment to Tevego." In 1843, three years after de Francia's death, Tevego was re-inhabited by orders of Carlos Antonio Lopez, Paraguay's new president, this time renamed Villa del Divino Salvador (Village of the Divine Savior), later shortened to San Salvador.
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