LONDON -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair could be suffering from the first signs of the madness of princes. It is paranoia, and it afflicts almost every political man who has ambition but does not have the security of the divine right of kings (the madness of kings being grandiosity or megalomania.)

When the madness grows unchecked as it did, say, with the late former U.S. President Richard Nixon, and any dictator you can think of, the prince believes that the crowd of people all around him harbors every sort of malign plotter; if he hears dissent, he knows he's found treachery and must stamp it out. If he doesn't hear dissent, he merely assumes the plotters are being more clever than usual. The only people, therefore, that he wants around him are those who have passed a loyalty test and utter only the words that express the prince's thoughts.

The paranoiac prince loses the ability to distinguish between ordinary argument, the sincerely held beliefs of another person, and a collective, secretive campaign to annihilate him in name if not in person.