Posted on 10/24/2009 12:13:59 PM PDT by Benjamin Harrison
I was just teaching Plato's "The Republic" in school and a terrifying thought occurred to me
"I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University."
I will put that quote on my classroom wall.
“Rhetoric and Madness: Robert Pirsig’s Inquiry into Values”
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~consigny/pirsig.html
“ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE”
R. Pirsig
http://www.booksamillion.com/product/9780060589462?id=4559903639462
Remember?
He argues that a true gov't would be based on rational thinkers who are "smarter" than the masses. (philosopher-kings).
These kings will know what is best for the people and take care of their needs based on rational choices.
I am certain at some level some of them do.
However those that do certainly are not rational.
A philosopher King would be isolated annd immune from the influence of special interest.
Members of congress swim in a sea of special interest. Members of congress are creatures that depend upon and seek out lobbyist opinions (and contributions).
Kings are born to their station; congressmen are elected and serve at the whim of the electorate. Congressmen will bow to the will of the electorate when forced to do so, a King may suffer revolution before bowing to the will of his subjects.
Even Kings did not really rule as Plato theorized. Kings were subject to the intrigues of court. Kings had to be aware of the ebbs and flows of the currents of the nobility. Kings also had to negotiate the intrigues of international political maneuvering.
These socialist no doubt look down upon We the People as ignorant pesants and think that they must rule because they must protect us from ourselves but it only goes to show that they are not nearly so rational as they think.
I agree with everything you said...my fear is that they do not see these truths.
If you are looking for the sources of about half of the progressive movement (Both right and left) you should not look to Plato but to Ralph Waldo Emerson. What became the movement that we see as social justice and equality among men was started by his great enlightenment. Most of the (Politics) that you read on the web or hear on (Some) radio talk shows and cable channels is only a bad characterization of what social and Christian movements became. Some of the criticism is earned (Trust me) but if you want to understand the beginnings of what you are seeing now and want to understand the left a lot better than you do now, find a better source than Plato.
Part of them fit your description, others who do believe in a God are taught from birth to worship a human superior who is "smarter than them"...such as the Catholic religion, which explains why most of Europe has succumbed to socialism over and over.
There is your real explanation for the hate directed by the left in the USA toward Evangelical Protestants. Most really do not understand or appreciate their independence fully.
The problem comes in when you understand that men are just men and that they can be corrupt, even if they do sound eloquent and educated. Massachusetts is just Chicago with a European/British accent.
There is no one human who can be fully trusted to have a persons best interest at heart at all times...IMHO. Why would anyone allow a few people to govern a mass of people with absolute power?...Early training.
I think you’re right. The thing I find most interesting is that EVERY liberal thinks they would be a part of the ruling philopher-kings. Little do they know that they are regarded as “the masses” by the leaders of their own group...
hh
PS Hopefully that is your real name, otherwise I could suggest a few better Presidents than Indiana’s lone contribution to the office....
Elitist, top-down, coercive Gov’t has been the norm for nearly all of human history. It’s only a matter of degree.
In fact, the United States and its Constitution, at least in its first 150-200 years can be considered quite an anomoly in the sum of human history.
Yes, the Elites do think that way and yes democracy does fail but not necessarily because the ‘masses’ are uninformed, but because from time to time the ‘masses’ are whipped into a mob and their actions are used by those that seek to impose tyranny as a consequence.
Democracy is often jokingly referred to as a poitical process where two foxes and a chicken decide on what is for dinner. It is a system that our Founders knew was flawed and would never stand up to tyranny.
Our founders were schooled in philosophy, antiquities such as Plato, and of course the Bible. Our Founders deliberated many many years on the best new form of government to preserve our freedoms and they produced what many consider to be a devinely inspired ‘Constitution’ which was considered by the civilized world at the time to be a “grand experiment”, the “American Idea”. The American form of government was considered an “idea”, that other nations observed and some thought would fail.
The United States was not founded as a democracy. Kids today are taught in error that the USA is a democracy. It is a republic, and can be said to be a democratic republic insofar that the House votes democratically but is checked by the republican form known as the Senate (which was weakened by the 17th Amendment but I digress), and the Senate is in turn checked by the Executive Branch. Each form is checked by the Constitution upon review by the Supreme Court and lastly the States and the People can override all other forms.
In short our system of government makes it maddingly tough for a tyrant to seize control of all government. And we often see why when we read Free Republic here, from discussions of 10th Amendment sovereignty, to the constitutionality of federally imposed healthcare.
I am certain that the would-be tyrants that occupy the Obama administration are aware of just how difficult it is to change America from a democratic republic to a socialist ‘democracy’. They can’t move too fast and they can’t move too slow. As the late leftist socialist Ted Kennedy said to wit “We will take anything we can get whenever we can get it”. So the leftist elite and the rightist elite (they are all totalitarians forming two political mafia families) will move slowly and will sprint when the opportunity presents itself. They will seek crisis and catastrophe from which to impose further laws and programs to control people, thereby inserting government between people and their freedom.
And to the elite, the notion of freedom for non-elites is frightening, because it means they are subject to those that would rise up from among the ‘masses’ and challenge their power. Therefore, the elites seek to control the media and its influence on the people’s thinking, to control the incomes of people, to control the armaments of people, to control the candidates that feign to be representatives of the people, and now they seek to control the ‘health’ of people. And we know that ‘health’ can mean anything that can be construed as having an effect on the socialist ideal of egalitarianism for masses, but not for themselves.
Socialists can easily control a democracy by controlling the lists of those they approve for election. It matters not if a citizen votes for person A or person B as long as the Elite have pre-approved person A and B. If an unapproved person C gets on the ballot in what is considered to be a strategic office, then the Elite’s army of government and media will descend on person C (witness Palin) until the socialist democracy has removed the unapproved intruder. Palin was approved as VP of a forordained losing ticket. However, her popularity was surprising and caused the machinery of the Elite to react against her. Time will tell if the Elite can overcome the Palin factor in the years ahead.
It is my hope that the People will continue to be awake and act in such a manner as to reform the government and return it to a form more true of its founding. To this end, the single most important issue that transcends all others is the issue of taxation which in 97 years has become a cancerous monstrosity.
Ans here is the cure:
Teach your students about the history of taxation in America and why the above system would restore the Republic and they need not worry about tyranny as much.
Aristotle believed that what we see is true and we can learn about the real world by investigating it. That philosophy is the source of the scientific and industrial revolutions. Aristotle believed that rational thinking was the source of wisdom.
Plato believed, in addition to his idea that we should be ruled by Philosopher Kings, that our perceptions could not be trusted, that what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears are only imperfect representations of the real world and cannot be trusted as a source of wisdom. Totally contrary to the views of Aristotle.
So if the Liberals of the children of Plato, and they are, then we Freepers, at least some of us, are certainly and proudly the children of Aristotle, the rationale thinkers. The Liberals rely on the "wisdom" of their Philosopher Kings. Freepers rely on science, study, investigation, skepticism and research. That the Aristotelian way.
“...a true gov’t would be based on rational thinkers who are “smarter” than the masses. (philosopher-kings). These kings will know what is best for the people and take care of their needs based on rational choices.”
That’s pretty much how they think.
“...the masses are not educated enough to make an informed vote on any issue.”
That’s pretty much how those whose thinking is in accord with the first quote above get elected.
“...does the left think that they are Plato’s Philosopher-Kings?”
I doubt that they are educated enough and at the same time thoughtful enough to make the connection with Plato.
You left out the part about our service owed to them or what lengths they would consider acceptable means to that end.
Congrats on being able to teach it—I barely had the patience to read it. A grade made me soldier on. Caves and forms and how “those who know” would make the rules as well as take the children and “raise them up right” ... it was like trying to read Faulkner or Joyce: an endless stream-of-consciousness BS.
The Greeks didn’t know the earth revolved around the sun or even about soap: athletes cleaned themselves by wiping-on oil then scraping it off with tool called a strygle (sp?), The average American 11th grader todays knows more about how the world actually works than any number of dead Athenians. So I’m not at all sure why anyone would devote serious time and effort to reviewing Plato’s `revelations’ unless it were a literary exercize, like reading Homer, and I’m not at all sure it has any political relevance at all. Aristotle, certainly; Democritus and the atomization theory; Isocrates and “man is the measure of all”; the playwrights, certainly. But Plato? Fuggedaboutit.
Simon Blackburn in studying Plato’s Republic described religions as “fossilized philosophies,” or philosophies with the questions left out. Again, however, I’m not all sure that young people today are dazzled by quasi-religious `revelations’ two millenium old when given the choice between the pipe dreams of pedants and the replicable, realities of empirical scientific study and the natural world and universe, with all its mystery and wonder.
I can only recall that it must be to them something like being offered a choice between warmed-over kool-aid or a good, cold beer.
“I will put that quote on my classroom wall.”
You’ll be famous, but fired.
Thank you for your points...I always teach them that we are a Republic. I inform them of the constraints against mob rule that are found in our rule of law...and like I said before, I encourage them to not become “the masses”...to be informed and to not accept authority just because they are told to...I always encourage them to carry the Constitution with them. Maybe I am a dying breed, a social studies teacher who loves this nation so passionately that what is happening is keeping me up at night.
I like that, but I like to think of us the Freepers as children of Aquinas and his addition to Aristotle that God can be found in all we observe.
Therefore you were a slave to your betters in every way, shape and form.....Sounds like the left.
Your mission to your students is vital. You are doing the Lord’s work. The baton MUST be passed to our kids and grandkids. Maybe there is hope—I was encouraged by those two young people who taped ACORN and exposed their rottenness. Soon enough, the course of the country will be in THEIR hands when all of us Boomers are gone.
It’s been a grand 250-year “experiment.” I wrestle daily with the prospect of it being over. By the way, I often think of Ben Franklin’s (?) comment: “Gentlemen, you have your republic—if you can keep it.”
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