Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic
That’s what’s scariest about Donald
Trump.
Democracies end
when they are too democratic.
And right now, America is a breeding ground for tyranny.
As this dystopian election campaign has unfolded, my mind
keeps being tugged by a passage in Plato’s Republic. It has
unsettled — even surprised — me from the moment I first read it in graduate
school. The passage is from the part of the dialogue where Socrates and his
friends are talking about the nature of different political systems, how they
change over time, and how one can slowly evolve into another. And Socrates
seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that “tyranny is probably
established out of no other regime than democracy.” What did Plato mean by
that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal
freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are
filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more
democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread.
Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of
inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual
freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated
in all hues.”
Read more at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html#
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