They were conquering despots.
It's a nuance of sociopathy where despots reside at the pinnacle which is megalomania, whereas terrorism, historically speaking and not just in the post-cold war era definition, in its essense, is an anti-social form of warfare, a reactionary sociopathic tendency of those who are traumatized by oppression. It's warfare for the disenfranchized.
But the essense of "terrorizing" is still the same and applies to all forms of warfare. The Conquistadors terrorized central america and the west indies, just as much as the pirates terrorized the west indies, just as much as the brits with some of the native american tribes.
It's not because a word was re-approriated that is loses its original intended meaning, hence why I said the Palahniuk catchphrase, it's not the right word, but it's the first one that comes to mind. That's because terrorizing has more than ONE meaning/application.
I find that a bit odd. It's the same overall relationship between the outcomes of societal stratification, personal developmental trauma and the insuing sociopathy.
You talk of standards, but to me that's irrelevant. The way you seem (assumption) to represent standards is through moral value judgements. I just see declining tendencies towards sociopathy because of overall stress relief in childrearing of our modern societies, but I still see the same overall mechanism present. It's the same behavior misadaptation to a lack of attachment-reward development and/or concurring physical and psychological traumas. Still the same overall factors. What it was then, is still the same today in how some of the first world countries are still pillaging 3rd world countries, it's still the extreme expression of sociopathy, the megalomania, its greed and thirst for power and dominance.
He was a sociopath, plain and simple.
