"To govern a nation with a poet’s logic and vision can only lead to great catastrophe. In reading Mao’s works, you’ll notice they are extremely enchanting. Packed as they are with the imagination, passion, and the utopian ideals of a poet, they are endlessly moving. But as soon as such ideas are transformed into practice, they will often bring about disaster. Mao often exhibits just such a conversion: romanticism at the theoretical level mutating into despotism at the practical level."