Moving on from last weeks installment – Plato continued his examination of an Oligarchy by stating “The defect of an Oligarchy is the creation of two separate states of being, one of the rich, and one of the poor, who constantly conspire against one another – and thus the Oligarchical rulers being well aware that their power depends upon the wealth and support of the rich will refuse to curtail the extravagance of a spendthrifts because they gain by their ruin.
He went to say “The ruling class in an Oligarchy do not seek remedies because they care only care about or money, and thus they are as careless of maintaining virtue as even the poorest of citizens whose families have been reduced to beggary, some of them owe money, and some have even forfeited their citizenship – but when men of lose their property or their rights of citizenship, still will they remain in the city seething with hatred against the new owners of their estates and ripe for revolution – for burning with hatred they will then conspire against those who have gotten their property, and above all and everybody else, their underlying spirit of revolution will begin to spread in a the disaffected populace.”
As this spirit of revolution grows the people will inevitably arise and remove the Oligarchical government from which will then arise the fourth stage of government known as Democracy, in the which there will be democratically minded men, who for the least cause or even with no cause at all they will fight to the death – but this democratic form of government will only come to power when the disaffected poor are the victors – after which they will kill some of their enemies, exile others, and then give equal shares in the new government to those who are left.”
Plato continued by saying “The manner of life in such a state is defined as that being that of Democrats wherein there is freedom and plainness of speech, every man does what is right in his own eyes, and every man has his own path in life – and is this not but the city full of freedom when a man may say and do what he likes – for the greatest charm of Democracy is that you may do as you like, you may govern if you like, let it alone if you wish, go to war or make peace and you may do all this irrespective of anybody else, and when you condemn men to death they remain alive all the same, and a man sent into can be exile can yet still stalk about like a hero and few will regard him nor care if they do.
Thus the Democratic state is not one but many like a bazaar where you can buy anything, and its from hence that arises the various an sundry examples of humanities character, for the Democratic state is like a piece of embroidery in which the colors and figures are instead the manner of men, wherein can be seen the full extent of human natures embroidered in a robe spangled with every sort of flower, and from which it is readily apparent how grandly a Democracy sets her foot upon all it’s fine theories of education, but how little a Democracy cares for the training of her statesmen.
Aside from this defect Democracy’s key feature (And it’s Achilles as well) is that over time everyone becomes a lover of tolerance, whereby everything and everyone is tolerated equally, thus democracy is a most a pleasingly lawless sort of government, distributing equality to equals and un-equals alike, because at it’s core Democracy is a form of government replete with a variety of inherent disorders – but a politician bent on tyranny will tell you “Freedom in a democracy is a glory unto the state alone” and it’s especially worth noting here, that Aristotle made the following statement with respect to the inherent defects of the Democracy such as we ourselves are experiencing today saying(Quote) “UNFETTERED TOLERANCE IS THE LAST VIRTUE OF A DYING SOCIETY” (UNQUOTE) and with this I fully concur!
Plato then declared that “Unrestrained Freedom will eventually lead to licentiousness, and so it is that a young man will pass into the freedom and libertinism of unseemly pleasures, for in all of us, even in the best of men there dwells the lawlessness of a beastly nature desiring pleasures and appetites I conceive to be unlawful – and while everyone has them, in some they are controlled, in others they are not controlled, and thus there is no conceivable degree of folly or crime not including a number of unnatural unions of which a man having abandoning keeping company with shame and common sense may not be most ready and willing to commit.
Plato explained this further by saying “From his youth upwards a child is supposed to have been trained under the strict guidance of a parent who encourages only the saving appetites in him, but when he has gotten himself into the company of a licentious sort he then begins to adopt their wanton ways, and soon thereafter rush’s headlong into opposite extreme as a result of the abhorrence he has for his father’s perceived meanness to the point that he does not receive sound advice, and if it so be that someone reminds him that some pleasures are spawned of evil desires, he will just shake his head, as he only lives from day to day indulging himself in whatever the appetite of the hour may be, for his life has neither law nor order being filled instead with flawed conceptions about personal freedom liberty and equality” and it’s these aberrant distortions concerning Democracy about which Plato wrote 2,378 years ago, that are becoming increasing manifest in the Democracies of today that evolved from the Oligarchies that proceeded them.”
