Ancient in a Modern World

Political Salvation

2010-07-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

I have recently heard from more than one friend the opinion that politics is at best a necessary evil in the life of a Christian, and preferably one to be avoided. This is foolishess. I refuse to discuss whether the salvation of men's souls is more important than their political salvation--I think that answer self-evident--what interests me is whether "political salvation" is possible, and if so, desirable.

Frankly, I think it is both.

As a Christian, what are our duties?

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

The second commandment is the one that interests us here. Loving our neighbor is going to require learning how to live with him in peace--namely, it is going to require politics--and to carry out Christ's commandment well, we must have and study good politics. There is really no escaping it.

Freedom and law are great goods, well endorsed by the words of God and men both. It is childish and delusional to disregard an entire area of human life devoted to them and to think we are living well.

Yes, Hillsdale children, I'm looking at you.

Abortion and the Abolitionists of Our Time

2010-07-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

"The difference between the Republican and the Democratic parties . . . [in] this contest," he declared, "is, that the former consider ABORTION a moral, social and political wrong, while the latter do not consider it either a moral, social or political wrong. . . . The Republican party . . . hold that this government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and that ABORTION is an unqualified evil to the UNBORN, to the BORN, to the soil, and to the State. Regarding it an evil, they will not molest it in the States where it exists . . . ; but they will use every constitutional method to prevent the evil from becoming larger. . . They will, if possible, place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate peaceable extinction, in Gods own good time."

I find the parallels between American slavery and American abortion quite piercing, especially in the character of the abolitionists, both then and now. It is no mere coincidence that we forget today, as the abolitionists did 170 years ago, that the question is not one of the morals of "the other side." The question is not whether those in favor of the institution are moral men--their hearts and minds are as good as ours; their institution is legal, and no long-standing institution can be simply removed without regard for the means or the consequences of doing so, no matter how much we may desire instant and universal moral purity.

The question was then, and is now, whether the victim is a human being. If the slave is a man, with all the natural rights of man, then slavery is an evil. If the unborn child, too, is equal in his rights with you and I, then abortion is an evil.

But we forget all this. The new abolitionism makes all the same tactical mistakes as the old, with all the same uncharitable moral indignation. We denounce, we impugn, we forget that whatever else it may be, the institution is legal. But we have the example of the past to teach us.

Our fathers condemned slavery, but when they saw that they were then unable to abolish it, they put it on the road to ultimate extinction. I am for doing the same with abortion. I do not blame the pro-choice for their beliefs. If I did not believe life began at conception--had I been raised differently--who is to say I would not hold the same position? It is not a thing we can undo overnight, and it is legal. We must be prudent.

The path to the ultimate extinction of abortion seems to me one of convincing the hearts and minds of the people. Mores change with religion and with education.

Statesmanship is education, but I believe what matters here is to have many children and raise them well, particularly in their first decade of life. It will not do to make abortion a national issue, as if a single presidential election or judicial appointment will reverse Roe v. Wade and by that somehow put the issue to rest.

Understanding the Declaration

2010-07-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

I used to believe in the natural inequalities among men as though men had different natures. I still believe men have different aptitudes, but I have come to understand the Declaration in the same way Lincoln does:

"I think that the authors of that noble instrument intended to include all me, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say that all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments or social capacity. They defined, with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal--equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for a free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.

The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be... a stumbling block to those who, in after times, might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.

They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack."

That fairly well sums it up.

When the Declaration comes up, many take "self-evident" to mean that all men are born knowing it. This is a mistake, for almost nothing is self-evident in that way.

Self-evident, in the usage of the time, meant available to any man who will deploy the full and proper use of his reason in seeking it. Opinion, mores and interest can all get in the way.

Men are not born knowing the ratios of octaves, but they are self-evident. Double or halve the length of your string, and you will have an octave.

On the Indispensability of Majority Rule

2010-07-10T21:46:00.000-07:00

"[Controversies arise,] and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority, in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them, whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority...

A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.

Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissable; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism is all that is left."

Plainer truth is rarely spoken. Once one accepts the equality of all men, the permanent rule of a minority (whether of one or a few) is rendered practically impossible and principally unacceptable. Government by consent follows from a social state of equality, and equality cannot be undone without removing both Christianity and modern natural science from the face and memory of the earth.

If we wish to avoid anarchy and despotism, then, we must substitute the rule of a majority for the unanimous will of the whole people. Just government requires the consent of the governed to be ruled according to natural and eternal principles of right.

When the majority errs, or chooses wrongly, we must persuade our fellow citizens of their error and persuade them to choose rightly--and they us. It is, I grant, much harder, much more challenging, and much less convenient a task than convincing a sole ruler would be. Republicanism is difficult and prone to failure and abuse. The government of a republic requires a virtuous citizenry. Free men must be free to choose wrongly. That is the cost of republican politics.

No one ever said it would be easy.

What Political Philosophy Is

2010-07-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

There are two great questions in political philosophy:

Is there more to human political life than power--are there immutable principles of justice on which we ought to base our politics? Is it really possible to rule according to such principles?

If so, then statesmanship is possible, but what is it? Many Straussians see the Founding as the creation of a political perpetual motion machine, answering all the questions and eliminating all need for statesmanship--prudent maintenance and administration are all that remain for us.

But the mechanics of government cannot run forever--they are only auxiliary safeguards to our liberty. We the people must forever be the primary and permanent safeguards of our own liberties.

If we are to be a republic; if we are to have self-government, we must reconcile the two great principles of our political tradition:

Government must be based on eternal principles of justice.
Government must be based on the consent of the governed.

This is the problem of republican government: the people must consent to just laws. The will and opinion of the people, then, must be guided by a love of just laws and from time to time this light must be renewed and rekindled in us by the voice of a statesman. We need a man with both a strong, clear conception of justice and the ability to persuade others of it as well.

The question is... when have we seen such men, and will one come again in our lifetime?

On Consitutions, part II

2010-06-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

This post is my second in response to Matt Taylor's, here. The first, which provides background, is here. Matthew, I love you. You have conflated two wonderfully different things.

The constitutions of all nations change, but the Constitution of the United States of America is meant to resist change. It is neither a descriptive summary of the laws and mores of the nation, changing with every generation, nor the end toward which we strive. It is the vehicle by which we may have self-government. The following quote may help:

"The Constitution and the Union... are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of "Liberty to all"--the principle that clears the path for all--gives hope to all, and, by consequence, enterprize, and industry to all.

The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.

The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple of gold" to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple, not the apple for the picture.

So let us act, that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken."

My friend, it is not the restoration of strict 1787 Consitutionalism, "big-C," that we must seek--for even in that time they were not all of one mind--but rather we must seek, as in every free and republican generation, to live well, by the principles of the Declaration.

It is not the picture, but the apple of gold we must seek. Good men in our time are not willing to die for parchment barriers--but good men in all times have been willing to die for freedom.

Aims of Education: I

2010-06-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

Education in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey--this is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name; that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all.

-Plato, Laws

On Constitutions, part I

2010-06-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

This is the first of two parts responding to Matt Taylor's post here. The first post is background for several points I will make in the second.

Matthew begins with a use of the word constitution that has fallen out of favor. A consitution, small "c," is "what consitutes," or what makes up a political community. The Greek is politeia, which can be translated constitution, regime, or legal institutions. A regime is the combination of the politeia and the bios ti, the institutions and the way of life, or what Tocqueville would call the laws and the mores.

A shared way of life and shared opinion concerning the just and the unjust, the praiseworthy and the blameworthy gives rise to the institutions, offices and laws, which in their turn have some (appreciable) influence on the mores from which they first have their source.

Ancient government was not totalitarian, but comprehensive.

The nature of a thing is found in its perfection, and the complete human being lives in a city. Like an acorn into an oak tree, a man grows from infancy into his completion with good nurture and cultivation only--for body and soul.

Gr. physis, "nature" < phuw, grow

It is not natural for a man to live alone; that is for the beasts and the gods. A man is not self-sufficient, nor is a family, and so for marriage, defense and other reasons, family joins family in a tribe, tribes join in villages and villages into a city, a polis. Just as a family is greater than the sum of its members because it encompasses their individual ends as human beings within its own end, the polis is that sum of partnerships which make possible a complete human life--its end is the highest and most complete of all human communities. And so, of necessity, its laws must encompass everything--from conception to burial.

This is because men are psychosomatic, neither purely instinctual nor purely intellectual. What is natural is what is right, but for humans, it must be chosen rather than simply the product of instinct--thus the need for education and good rearing for a man, if he is to be virtuous. The best part of him must rule the lesser parts, and so too with a city. Nature requires the aid of nurture to come to its fruition, and so it is natural to men to live in cities and have conventions. The great change to all this is wrought by Christianity.

Christianity is monotheistic and universal. It severs the link of "nature" which connects the citizen to the city with divine force, and it renders him equal to all men in the most important of matters. It is the acorn of self-government, and of Tocqueville's "principle of equality." It introduces into Western history what Manent calls "the theological-political problem." With the advent of mdoern natural science and the horror of the religious civil wars which wrack post-Reformation Europe, Christianity brings about the modern era.

Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke all give new accounts of man's nature, based in his origins, not in his perfection. The telological worldview falls. Modern liberalism teaches that FREEDOM is the paramount thing now--it is for men to be virtuous themselves now, not through the rearing and guidance of the city. Self-government requires (and makes possible) limits on political power. A new reflection on the nature of man requires that just government not teach him what to think and worship, but is must secure his right to do so. Government must now confine its power to the actions and not the souls of men. Disestablishment allows for an avoidance of religious civil war, and men of different religions may be fellow-citizens---and citizens of different nations may be fellow believers.

The danger of modern liberal government is that it may extinguish extraordinary virtue along with extraordinary vice and religious war under the suffocating blanket of soft despotism . The safeguards against this cannot be constiutional as they were for the ancients, whose mores and laws were more often the written and unwritten versions of the same thing.

Father's Day: My Father

2010-06-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

My father is my hero.

I have never known a better man, nor one whose word is more his bond. My father taught me right from wrong. He taught me to love the Word of God. He taught me to love regardless of what we receive in return. God gave him a child, and I am the man he raised. Despite all his faults, his constancy, his integrity, his selflessness, his servant’s heart, the value of his word, and the examples of his self-discipline, his tireless work ethic, and his servant leadership, never lacking in humility, have made him my hero.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

I love you.

Jody

On Natural Rights

2010-02-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

EDIT: I started this post on 23 Feb 2010

A few days ago I heard a young friend of mine utter the phrase "I don't believe in natural rights. There are no such things." Hearing my own self from a year ago, I began a conversation with him about what exactly he meant by it. Having come to hold the ideas of natural rights and equality to be inseparable from liberty in our time myself, the irony of this is not lost on me.

I wrote a letter on the subject to a friend of mine on the subject of my own journey out of that position. I post the text of it below with his permission. Apologies for the copy errors, as I originally wrote it by hand.

Dear Thomas,

My friend, you asked me how I came, from a firm opposition to the very idea of natural rights, to hold true and precious that very doctrine as the last, best hope for freedom.

I laugh to say it that way, but it is true. I feel no need to reacquaint you with the reasons by which aristocracy can commend itself, nor to remind you of the beautiful, serene harmony that a hierarchical view of the world provides.

My journey began when I told Arnn that I did not believe in natural rights, though at times I would like to—I simply could find no argument for the existence of these magical primary substances by whose possession we are entitled to X and Y and Z.

He stopped me and said, “Jody, of course you believe in natural rights.” He said it gently, paternally, and with more than a little amusement, as one speaks to a child or an adolescent who has discovered one of the fundamental problems of adult life and consequently lost all perspective.

“You are not a dog,” he continued, “and so you ought not to be treated like a dog. You are not a horse and so you ought not to be treated like a horse. You are a man, and so you ought to be treated like a man. This is the essence of natural rights: that there are certain ways it is right for men to treat each other, because it is according to their nature.”

A slightly longer explanation can be taken from the middle of Alexander Hamilton’s editorial, “The Farmer Refuted”:

“Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed, that the deity, from the relations, we stand in, to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is, indispensibly, obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever.

This is what is called the law of nature, [he now quotes Blackstone] "which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this original" [Hamilton then continues].

Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.”

The first thing I must say is that Hamilton’s understanding of the self-evident law of nature causes as many problems for a systematic treatment of justice and for the realization of justice in human affairs as does free will itself.

Men disagree about the law of nature and they fall victim to the temptation to claim their own part and interest as nature and justice. This diminishes neither its reality nor its beauty. Virtue and justice are easily missed and fallen short of, but no glorious thing comes with the guarantee that we may obtain it.

It is a common argument made that there are no rights but only authority and responsibilities—at least; it is common at Hillsdale, usually among those who believe the American Revolution illegal and unbiblical. This argument, I think, is not the serious stumbling block it seems, but merely a combination of a poor understanding of the theory of natural rights and a desire to feel intellectually superior. It has, at least, been the case in my own life and most of those I have seen. I will let your experience of Hillsdale students—particularly Stewart students—argue for me on this point.

To my own thought, rights are shorthand for the way we ought to live and be treated which is in accordance with our nature. dikaiosyne is a right ordering of all things, is it not—whether in the soul, in relations between two men or in a political body?

Rights bring with them inseparable duties. God has given us life and faculties, and our responsibility is to use them well—how absurd it would be to say that we lack the authority to do so! A right is not a mere entitlement—for it can be violated—and those who think they should be rejected seem to me to be throwing out the Declaration because the progressives perverted it. To the Protestant who claims there is no natural law but only divine revelation and the laws of man, I ask the following questions:

Say that your government orders you not to worship God, or to worship false gods. You will disobey, and rightly so. But is this simply because it is against the Scriptures? Even had it not been explicitly revealed in them, would you not still rebel against such manifest wrongness? This, then, is the law of nature, written on the hearts of men. This is why evil laws are an affront not only to the Divine Legislator but to mortal men, you and I, as well.

So I have come to agree with Arnn that all well educated men in our day believe in natural rights, whether they acknowledge it or no. But I owe you more of an explanation: I have not told you why I have accepted equality and democracy.

The short answer is that I read Democracy in America, which was written to persuade aristocrats that such times are over and we must learn to live in the new world. The long answer is in the following quotes:

“After the general idea of virtue I know of none more beautiful than that of rights, or rather these two ideas are intermingled. The idea of rights is nothing other than the idea of virtue introduced into the political world. It is with the idea of rights that men have defined what license and tyranny are. Enlightened by it, each could show himself independent without arrogance and submissive without baseness. The man who obeys violence bows and demeans himself; but when he submits to the right to command that he recognizes in someone like him, he raises himself in a way above the very one who commands him. There are no great men without virtue; without respect for rights, there is no great people: one can almost say there is no society; for what is a union of rational and intelligent beings among whom force is the sole bond?”[1]

I think Tocqueville is right that all societies have had some notion of rights—not “equal for all” certainly—but the point I wish to make is that there are such things, though they are not any more primary substances than legal rights are.

My metaphysical misgiving put to rest, I came finally across the passage which I think is—of all of them—most responsible for the change in my own views.

Tocqueville is writing about the differences between artistocracy—inequality, not the Aristotelian regime—and democracy, or a social state of equality like ours today.

“In this century [viz. the early 19^th], when the destinies of the Christian world appear to be unresolved, some hasten to attack democracy as an enemy power, while it is still getting larger; others already adore it as a new god that issues from nothingness; but both know the object of their hatred or their desire only imperfectly; they do combat in the shadows and strike only haphazardly.

What do you ask of society and its government? We must understand each other.

Do you want to give a certain loftiness to the human spirit, a generous way of viewing the things of this world? Do you want to inspire in men a sort of contempt for material goods? Do you desire to give birth to or to maintain profound convictions and to prepare for great devotions? Is it a question, for you, of polishing mores, of elevating manners, of making the arts shine? Do you want poetry, renown, glory? Do you intend to organize a people in such a manner as to act strongly on all others? Do you destine it to attempt great undertakings and, whatever may be the result of its efforts, to leave an immense mark on history?

If this is, according to you, the principal object that men ought to propose for themselves in society, do not take the government of democracy; it would surely not lead you to your goal.”

My whole heart cried yes to those questions. I want glory, execellence, nobility. But I want it for me, for my thymos, not because I think it best for those around me. When I think, I can make arguments that the average peasant was happier than bourgeois man, and I believe them.

There is a tranquility that comes with being ruled, and with having one’s place in a great hierarchy that cannot be found in democracy. The community that aristocracy provides tells a man who he is, what his duties are, and even his destiny.

Democracy provides nothing which does not come from within the man himself. Equality renders us more naturally separate and alone. But the barrenness of it is a wilderness in which men may ennoble themselves in greater numbers than ever before. Still, my preference was for the heights of glory, not a higher average. Tocqueville goes on:

“But if it seems to you useful to turn the intellectual and moral activity of man to the necessities of life and to employ it in producing well-being; if reason appears to you more profitable to men than genius; if your object is not to create heroic virtues but peaceful habits; if you would rather see vices than crimes, and if you prefer to find fewer great actions on the condition that you find enormities [of evil]; if instead of acting within a brilliant society it is enough for you to live in the midst of a prosperous society; if, finally, the principal object of government, according to you, is not to give the most force or the most glory possible to the entire body of the nation, but to procure the most well-being for each of the individuals who compose it and to have each avoid the most misery, then equalize conditions and constitute the government of democracy.”

I doubt my feelings on this choice need any elucidation. I have never been partial to being limited or ignored while the floor is raised. But what Tocqueville wrote next cut me to the quick, and it was this, I think, that impelled me to change my beliefs and whatever in my way of life depends on them accordingly.

“If,” he writes, “there is no longer time to make a choice and if a force superior to man already carries you along toward one of the two governments without consulting your desires, seek at least to derive from it all the good it can do; and knowing its good instincts as well as its evil penchants, strive to restrict the effects of the latter and develop the former.”[2]

It is good that we accept equality, if we wish to be of any use to those outside the scope of our own families. Would even our own friends permit an aristocracy among themselves? I think not.

Though we recognize the existence of natural aristoi, even Hillsdale students who love the past would not permit a legal or inherited inequality to be founded among them. How much less so our fellow citizens?

No, I had to let go my love of old stories of kingship as the best regime, to moderate myself and say with Tocqueville: “all those in the centuries we are now entering who try to base freedom on privilege and aristocracy will fail… nor is there a legislator so wise and so powerful as to be in a position to maintain free institutions if he does not take equality for his first principle and creed.”[3]

It is not, however, a question of learning to live weak, separate and alone. “When plain citizens associate, they constitute very opulent, very influential, very strong beings—in a word, aristocratic ‘persons’.” Political and private associations must take the place of lords.

The answer to the weakness of individuals is to unite them. The press was a great engine of this in his day; the Internet is even more enabling in our own.

The dangers of democracy you have, of course, heard a thousand times. Soft despotism. [The link is actually two good quotes] There are two “fatal ideas” we must avoid (we lovers of the old way). The first is that equality must, of necessity lead to anarchy. The second is that it must end in soft despotism.

I know many a Christian who, “[having] discovered the path that seems to lead men invincibly toward servitude, they bend their souls in advance to the necessary servitude; and despairing of remaining free, at the bottom of their hearts they already adore the master who will soon come.

The first [equality è anarchy] abandon freedom because they deem it dangerous; the second because they judge it impossible.

If I [Tocqueville] had this latter belief, I would not have written the work you just read; I would have limited myself to groaning in secret about the destiny of those like me.”

One last quote:

“It is no longer a question of retaining the particular advantages that inequality of conditions procures for men, but of securing the new goods that equality can offer them. We ought not strain to make ourselves like our fathers, but strive to attain the kind of greatness and happiness that is proper to us.”

That is, in so many [11] pages as it took weeks, the story of how I came to embrace democracy.

The means by which equality and liberty can be combined (religions, associations and local gov’t) I will not include in this letter, although I would be glad to do so in the next.

Democracy is not without its problems, and some of the solutions—especially the idea of “self-interest well understood,” which teaches men that their interest is to be virtuous, rather than proclaiming the beauty of virtue—feel alien and even shallow, but I am convinced that it is not my place to reject them, for they are what must keep us free.

We must not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

There is still a need for statesmanship—perhaps greater than ever before in history. But this letter is long enough and I am done for now.

The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

J. Lent

[1] DA I.ii.6

[2] DA I.ii.6

[3] DA II.iv.7

Some Thoughts on Virtue

2009-10-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

Montesquieu writes: “In a republican government, the full power of education is needed. Fear in despotic governments arises of itself from threats and chastisements; honor in monarchies is favored by the passions and favors them in turn. But virtue is a renunciation of oneself, which is always a very painful thing.”

He goes on to discuss the ancient Greek city a kind of martial monastery, in which virtue is learning to love the pain. But the Greeks did not see it that way. The ancients saw virtue as a second wind, a point when the pain disappears and we begin to run for the pure joy of it. Aristotle wrote of the virtues becoming second natures by their exercise, of reaching a point where selflessness is not painful but pleasurable.

Happiness through virtue is our nature rejoicing in being made complete. Where Montesquieu viewed training in virtue as the strict and painful stretching and exercising of the soul. But like a man who wonders why anyone would “torture” himself with calisthenics, he misses the point entirely. Virtuous living is not torture but the actualization of our human potential.

Nature gave us minds and hearts and bodies capable of strength, but it is up to us to exercise them until they become strong. So doing, we do not learn to love the pain, but rather to rise beyond it and find the joy.

Finding One's Place in the World

2009-07-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

I am tired of being told that I can be whatever I want to be.
I am tired of hearing that I can make my own way. I do not want that.

"You grow into your real adulthood and wholeness and selfhood by learning the steps in the dance. The dance is there.

It is already choreographed. The music is playing. All creatures--all stars, all archangels, all lions and eagles and oak trees and oceans and grasshoppers--all are dancing, and the great thing is to learn the steps and move into your place."¹

That is what I want.

The world is not a vast, teeming chaos. It is a vast, teeming cosmos. In the Greek, an order. In that order, virtue is not a thing "of use to society." Virtue is human excellence--the highest and best of which we are capable.

I want to find my place in the world and in community, not to be an island. Silly democratic moderns.

"What we human beings need, Lewis would urge, is not the blazing of new trails but the grace to walk the well-trodden trails well."

Amen.

1The quote is from Thomas Howard's essay, "The Moral Mythology of C.S. Lewis," which can be found on this page, or directly here.

Article on Obama's Economy by VDH

2009-07-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson, eminent historian and classicist, wrote the following article. I suggest you take five minutes to read it--you won't be disappointed.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTIzOTg4NjNmNmZjZTkxMTRkYmJkMDFlY2I5ZmQwOWQ=&w=MA==

Iustitia Sub Lege: The Supreme Court Building

2009-07-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

In my two months here, I have grown used to walking Capitol Hill. It is surprising how mundane and tangible the "halls of power" are. I searched for the right word for months, but yesterday, I found its perfect descriptor: "Not-sacred."

I do not mean to say that the Hill is secular, or any other adjective opposite to sacred. I mean to say that my conception of the seat of our people is this:

It should be a ley line of gravity and wisdom, to be walked in and spoken of with reverence. DC, I have found, is not so. The Capitol rings with the shouts of children and the chatter of tourists. This is not wrong. The House and Senate office buildings are, to be sure, generally quiet places--there's an air of professionalism in Rayburn or in Dirksen--but I would never describe them as "reverent."

There is, though, one place that is different. In the Supreme Court, men lower their voices instinctively. The halls of marble are generally quiet and solemn. It is a very good thing. The reverence and the silence in the courtroom are not something demanded, they are our acknowledgment of the law and this building as something greater than ourselves. It is not perfect, but is a place in which the words majesty, humility, honor, hierarchy, ceremony, guilt, innocence and authority all still hold some meaning. Such things are great and good. Sadly, reverence has vanished from so many of our churches (yes, I think from Protestant churches especially--tradition has its place). It has vanished from so much of our government. It is good for us to encounter those things greater than ourselves which demand our rightwise humility. The Court, though, does attempt to force my piety; I find that there I humble myself willingly.

I love such places.

"The Case for Working With Your Hands"

2009-07-07T05:30:00.000-07:00

An excellent article by Matthew Crawford at the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html

Nature Abhors a Vacuum--Cap and Trade

2009-06-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

Cap and trade isn't going to work--and that's assuming it passes the Senate. Neither is a carbon tax a solution. Neither will save the economy; neither will save the world.

Cap and trade institutionalizes a notion of "punishing" pollution monetarily--by fines and otherwise. It meets our standards of justice more easily (and is certainly more enforceable) than flogging the CEO of an offending institution or putting board members in the stocks would do. But all too quickly, cap and trade will become, "pay per spew." If the costs of breaking emissions caps don't outweight the benefits (viz. the costs of overhauls, buying/trading for a higher cap, etc.), we're simply going to break them and pay the fine. Carbon taxes are just a simpler, more honest version of the same thinking.

"I can break, take or do whatever I want, so long as I have the money to pay for it," is a poor philosophy, encouraging calculation of risk rather than right, and ultimately contempt for the rule of law. That is not a philosophy I want ingrained any deeper into my culture, Rep. Waxman, thank you very much.

But the philosophy is all wrong here. We're trying to eliminate a thing--what will fill its place? Nature abhors a vacuum. What we ought to do is pour money and time into researching ways to create "clean" energy--not in order to cut back on using it, but to create a superabundance. Think of it like investing in computers in 1981. Let's make energy as cheap and as plentiful as hard drive space is now. Imagine the possibilities in a world where $33 per month could buy you unlimited energy.

I don't pretend to know what new sources of energy will look like, and I realize we'd need new business models to deal with abundant rather than scarce resources. I like the idea. There are plenty of individuals more enterprising than I who would find a way. And if the environment were to "get saved" in the process, so much the better. Forget making pollution prohibitively expensive, let's make clean energy hugely profitable.

No Sympathy for Sotomayor

2009-06-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

Interesting. Very interesting.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31609275/ns/politics-white_house

A Deeper Look at the Declaration

2009-06-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

The Declaration of Independence is not the Republic, nor is it the Politics. It is what it says of itself: as submission of facts and principles to a candid world--it is an explanation, not a systematic justification, and it is a mistake to take it as such. Jefferson wrote of it:

"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c."
--T. Jefferson, Letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825.

It is, perhaps an American creed.

I have one single trouble with it. I do not understand the necessity of the language of "rights." A gold star to anyone who can tell me what a right is, other than convenient circular shorthand. The "right to life" means "you can't kill me." But why? "Because I have a right to life." I suppose that we mean that men ought be treated in certain ways, according to their shared human nature, and some of those ways we simplify with the term "rights."

But I will leave my Aristotelian cognitive dissonance for another day. In this post, I'm going to try to work through the Declaration passage by passage in hopes of coming to understand it better, or at least to find possibilities within it. I think there are a great many thoughts embedded in the document not apparent in the first reading. I've tried to bring some of these to light. Of course, I'll be wrong about some of them, so if you feel I read too deeply or too shallowly into it, post and tell me where I'm wrong.

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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
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Let's start here. Thirteen states--separate entities now considering themselves "of America" rather than colonies "of Britain," come together (Congress' literal Latin meaning), united in one voice. This is powerful language--try to get thirteen men or women to agree on a course of action.

A declaration, in this sense, is not simply a statement. It is not a memo to the king, but a formal legal resolution passed by a legislative body.

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When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,
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The language here is deep. The question is one of when, not if, and the events are distinctly human. What are the implications?

The very first word asserts that what follows is not mere theory, but the wisdom of accumulated experience: this has happened before, and it will happen again.

"Human events" is a throwaway phrase, but spend a minute to consider it. Why "human?" Beasts are not political. They have no station by equality of nature. They are without moral obligations, possessing only instinct. Gods are above the powers of the earth, under no obligation to the opinions of men.

Only mankind has such a place. Only human men and women have these troubles, and only we must declare with words--those most human of all things--our reasons to one another, out of respect for our mutual participation in the same nature.

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... and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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The first word I want to talk about is "station." It comes from the Latin, and before that the Greek. There are two senses to the word--the first is the notion of making a stand, as in "Here I stand, I can do no other." The second is a sense of placement, i.e., the colonies have been placed in a separate and equal relation to the powers of the earth, placed by Nature and by God.

Flowing from this fount of equality (which we will see later) is a decency that must acknowledge the opinions of other men. Something about human nature must be important, then, that we must declare our causes even to those they do not concern. Note that decency requires acknowledgment of the humanity of others, not a request for permission to act.

At this point, the authors of the Declaration have explained what they are about, and the thing itself really begins. They are going to lay out their principles, set forth their grievances, and then declare themselves consequently independent.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
------------------------------------

Perhaps never has a greater political statement been made in mortal history.

Self-evident truths.

Such principles must be like oaks in a sunlit field: one sees them or one does not--they cannot be argued. First principles never are. They must simply be accepted or rejected.

If all men are created equal, in what way? I deliberately do not say that men are equal in their rights. As soon we begin a discussion of rights, we see that they are not equal. Some have the right to vote and others do not. Men are clearly not equal in their abilities--I cannot paint like Michelangelo. Men are equal before God, equal in their participation in human nature, and ought to be equal before the law.

How are we to understand the next phrase, "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights?" I take it to mean that the way men should be treated inheres in their nature and depends on no mortal will. Man's nature--and therefore his rights--are not determined by any human agency. Be he an Atheist, a Deist or a Catholic, a man can believe this as long as he believes man's nature to be fixed.

Why are the three rights mentioned Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness? I think these arguments come from Jerusalem rather than Athens (the history majors among you may say that they come, in fact, from France and I would not be terribly inclined to disagree).

If there is a god who has made us stewards of our own lives, then it is not our place or that of others to take and destroy what has been entrusted to us. There must be a "right" to life.

If we are no longer to worship the gods of our cities and ancestors, but one God in many cities, what does this mean for the nature of our politics and our government? There must be freedom of conscience, and of religion. Government then must be limited. Men must have liberty.

This changes the nature of government. It can no longer be virtue, or human excellence, or righteousness--not if there is to be freedom of conscience. The end of government must now be the self-government of its citizens. It exists to supply what they cannot--what Locke called the "defects of the state of nature":

--Lack of a common and established Law
--Lack of an effective power to enforce the Law
--Lack of an impartial arbitrator to judge between men under the Law

Hence the legislative, executive and judicial branches of our government. This is the argument of Locke, and of the Declaration.

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--That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
------------------------------------

I don't believe there can be much argument as to what the end of American government is. Whether these ought to be the ends of government is a different question--this is what is. Certain monarchists I know aside, I feel that this if we were each born for a reason, then there was likely also a reason we were born in America. I cannot change the foundations of America any more than I can change the tectonic plates beneath my house, even if I wanted to.

Governments derive just powers from consent. The word "just" implies that governments can and do acquire unjust powers. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it affirms that certain powers are just for it to have, and therefore good. Government is not itself a "necessary evil," but, rightly formed and executed, it is a positive good.

Consent. Let's be clear: this does not mean direct Athenian democracy deciding all debates. Congress is elected by the people and is a filter for popular rule. Consent is a principle, not a direct practice.

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--That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
------------------------------------

For a government to become destructive of its own ends is for it to lose its authority. A house gutted by fire is no longer a house, and may be fit only to be torn down and rebuilt. Those who live under that roof must decide. A father who simply abandons his family loses all authority over them (and all credibility as a man). A king who fractures and dissolves the rule of law has no jurisdiction over a people who wish to maintain law and order. There is no divine right of kings.

The second half the clause is a clever reference of the Declaration to itself--the authors are laying out the principles that to them seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. The organizing of powers will come 11 years later.

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Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
------------------------------------

The phrasing is very clear and to the point in this passage. There is only one thing I want to mention, which is that the disposition of mankind here is not a bad one. It is in fact very good--consider those who cannot let any insult pass, or consider a world in which every injustice, however small, was met with a new revolution. Such a place would be far worse than the worst tyranny.

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But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
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Abuses are misuses of power. Usurpations are unlawful acquisitions of power. Both crop up in the list of grievances at the end. If men are to be self-governing, they must resist certain things. The question of where one draws the line is one to be answered prudentially, but clearly the Fathers thought the time had come.

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Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world...
------------------------------------

The rest of the Declaration I leave unexamined, save to say that the destabilization of the rule of law in the colonies is listed first, as the paramount issue. For more, see my previous post here.

One last thing:

Absolute = Beyond or outside the law.
Tyranny = Rule of one man, without laws.

The elimination of colonial laws and legislatures was both against British constitutionalism and the establishment of tyranny. Tyranny does not require mass murder or an Iron Curtain. The defiance of the King was not a hyperbolic accusation but a determined last stand on principles of law and liberty.

For the Lazy

2009-06-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

I have now added an expand/collapse button to the Republic post, so that if you want to read the essay you can, but if not, it doesn't make the page infinitely long.

Thanks!

Free Will?

2009-06-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

While I am not a determinist, I don't think much of the notion of "free will," primarily because only one in a thousand proponents seems to know what he means by it. Usually it seems to mean, "I am not a determinist." But this is not the same as believing we can do anything we will, or even the same as understanding the meaning of the word.

I may at some point write on that, but for now, a FASCINATING video about how we make choices:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI

Justice and the Human Soul: II

2009-06-25T16:52:00.000-07:00

If you read the essay on the Republic, thank you.

If not, the argument, very simply, is thus: Justice is a right ordering of the soul. It is always preferable to do justice than injustice, because injustice disorders, cripples and in the end destroys that very thing by which we live: our souls.

The book Black Like Me is one of the most striking stories of injustice I have ever read.

When I was a child, one of my best friends was black. But if you had mentioned it to me, it would have meant no more to me than if you had observed that his hair was black and mine was read. I would have looked at you and wondered what your point was. I don't remember being aware of "race" as an issue (or a way to divide men) until I was a teenager.

I write this to emphasize how foreign the experiences Griffin describes are to me. We call it "discrimination," but that is a word too euphemistic, perverting our language to avoid calling a thing by its true name. "Racism" does not describe it. All men are of one race.

Is it any surprise that men deprived of human dignity and all the pleasures that enlarge the spirit turn to pleasures of the flesh to avoid despair? Is it any surprise that men with great gaping holes where their hearts should be will do anything to fill them? Is it any surprise that they go wrong then?

Reading Black Like Me, I can only conclude one thing:

To despise a man for no other reason than the color of his skin is not mere prejudice. It is not enlightened rationality. To hold such views beyond a mere hour's thought is to choose them. It is vice. It is hatred. It is injustice.

It is evil.

Things are, as I understand it, different now, in 2009, than they were in 1959. But the idea that fifty years ago, such injustice and evil could be done in America--not only done but thought good, or right, or even in accordance with God's will--it angers me. It is against everything I have been raised to cherish and to defend. It is against every principle on which America rests. It is against everything I love. It is against human nature, disfiguring and distorting.

And my heart cries out to fight it and to stand against it.

The path of wisdom is a narrow one here. On the one hand is submission to injustice, on the other, revenge--doing injustice. On some small level, I begin to understand the desperate frustration men must have felt.

Say what you will about him, Dr. King found the way. We call it civil disobedience, or non-violent protest, but those are not good enough names for it. I do not have one, I only have an image:

How does a man stand against the flood of injustice? He must be a rock, set deep in the river bed. Though the water flows against and around him, he is unmoved. When the flood subsides, as in time it must, he will remain.

Please leave me your thoughts.

Justice and the Human Soul

2009-06-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading book called Black Like Me, by John Griffin, a journalist who medically changed the color of his skin for six weeks in 1959 to experience firsthand what it was to be black in the deep South. I'll post on it at some point, but it triggered thoughts I want to address first.

Below is an essay I wrote summarizing Plato's Republic, particularly focusing on the composition and origin of his "best regime" and the relationship of justice to nature--both the nature of the city and the nature of our souls. This essay is not all comprehensive, long though it is. It hardly addresses the more metaphysical aspects of Books VI and VII. For this I apologize--please do level whatever comments you have on the whole thing, but especially on the more "philosophical" bits as opposed to the "political" parts (assuming you believe in the dichotomy).

Two notes and a request to keep in mind before the essay itself:
1. The translation I used was that of Allan Bloom. I am indebted to many of his insights, and make no claim to originality. That is not my desire, nor is it my aim. I aim to understand human nature, and Bloom helps me to understand Plato, who understood us well.

2. The citations are Stephanus notation, or pages of Bloom's translation and interpretive essay where applicable.
3. There is a difference between "what is best" and "what is best for human beings." Consider that the best of all things is the Divine Nature itself, and the best thing for mankind is knowledge of and unity with the Divine. Those are not the same. In the same way, it will help to think of the "best regime" from the outset as belonging to the former cateogory--the line between ideality and practicality can be argued, but let us not take Plato for a fool. Of course, feel free to post comments in disagreement.

Plato's Republic

The best regime is conceived in speech, born of Glaucon's dissatisfaction with simple arguments. His demand for a natural account of justice necessitates the “founding” of a regime based on nature. Such a regime is ordered remarkably like an ideal soul, and from it Socrates draws his arguments in favor of the just life as the best way of life.

The foundation for a discussion of the best regime is set in Book I, as various unsatisfactory definitions of justice are laid out. Cephalus turns over the discussion to his son quickly, who sets forth the first attempt at an account of justice. Polemarchus first says it to be giving to each what is owed,^¹ but soon refines his argument to name justice “[the art] that gives benefits and harms to friends and enemies.”^² Socrates quickly undoes this argument, for a thing harmed is made worse, and it is ridiculous to speak of making a man worse (i.e. vicious) by virtue.^³ He concludes that “it is never just to harm anyone.”^⁴ Polemarchus agrees, but the interlocutors are left no more knowledgeable than before, and with a feeling of having been spun in circles. Thus Socrates whets the appetites of his listeners.

Thrasymachus then springs forward, challenging Socrates not to refute, but to positively assert the nature of justice.^⁵ Professing not to know, Socrates asks for Thrasymachus' own thoughts. “Justice is the advantage of the stronger”^⁶ turns out to be just as flawed as the previous definition. Rulers, he says, set laws for their own advantage and declare obedience to them to be justice.^⁷ Socrates maneuvers him into admitting penultimately that “there is no kind of knowledge that considers or commands the advantage of the stronger, but rather of what is weaker and ruled by it.”^⁸ Thrasymachus, undeterred, asserts that injustice is what is to one's one advantage, and that perfect injustice is “mightier, freer and more masterful than justice,”^⁹ paving the way for Glaucon's later arguments. He attempts to leave, but Socrates calls him back and returns to his first positive assertion: all rule is for the sake of the ruled, not the ruler. Why then should men be willing to rule? Socrates gives the art of wage-earning as what Bloom calls “the architectonic principle”^¹⁰ inducing men to rule. It clearly is not up to the job, as Socrates himself points out—good men are unwilling to rule for money or prestige, they require the inducement of necessity and the penalty of having a bad ruler if the good will not take the job.^¹¹

Socrates then takes up Thrasymachus' assertion that a life of injustice is stronger than and preferable to a life of justice. This question of the best way of life dominates the rest of the discussion. Socrates backs Thrasymachus into a corner and in fairly sophistical fashion concludes that justice must be virtue and wisdom and injustice by opposition vice and ignorance.^¹² Thrasymachus grudgingly agrees, and Socrates goes on to state that for a work to be done well, it must have its proper excellence. Justice is an excellence of the soul and living, ruling and deliberation are its works, therefore the just man lives well. The man who lives well is happy and wretched is he who does not, therefore the just man is happy and the unjust miserable. Thrasymachus is subdued at this point.

Unsatisfied, Glaucon steps forward and demands a firmer defense of justice. It has been praised, it has triumphed over injustice in the conversation with Thrasymachus, but he wants to know not merely the consequences, but the nature of justice, and to hear its nature defended as better than that of injustice. To this end he puts forward the “opinion of the many” that it is natural and good to do injustice, but men, being unable to get away with injustice, would rather agree neither to do nor suffer it than to suffer it, and this compact is justice. He further argues by the example of Gyges' ring that the just and the unjust man, if exempted from the consequences of their actions, would act exactly the same. He then sets up two men, the one perfectly unjust, to the point of having “the greatest reputation for justice” and the other perfectly just despite a reputation for injustice. The just man, the many will say, will be crucified in the end, “and know that one shouldn't wish to be, but to seem just.”^¹³

Adeimantus then steps in to add to his brother's argument that the only benefit of justice is reputation, arguing that the poets and religion only add reputation before gods to reputation among men, and that “if we are just, we won't be punished by the gods. That is all.”^¹⁴ “There is not one,” he claims, “who has ever blamed injustice or praised justice other than for the reputations, honors and gifts that come from them.”^¹⁵ He and his brother demand not only “the argument that justice is stronger, but show what each in itself does to the man who has it—whether it is noticed by gods and human beings or not—that makes the one good and the other bad.”^¹⁶

Socrates offers the solution of seeking justice on a larger scale, as one might seek a larger version of a text. He proposes to inquire into the justice of a city and having seen it, to find the justice of a man. Adeimantus agrees and Socrates begins. A city, he says, comes into being because man, by nature, is not self-sufficient.^¹⁷ Men have different natures, and different aptitudes. A work is best accomplished by a man who practices only one art, so the city will abide by the rule of “one man, one art.”^¹⁸ Socrates then builds a city, adding men and crafts, until he reaches what Glaucon derides as a “city of sows,”^¹⁹ in which have simply enough for the needs of the body and no more. He desires luxury, which requires expanding the city, which in turn he dubs the origin and cause of war.^²⁰ The things which are not necessary to the life of the body seem to cause the greatest evils, but later, they will be the source of the greatest goods. From war arises a need for a guardian class, and the art of war finds greater importance than all the other crafts previously laid out, because the others depend on it. Guardianship will thus require greater leisure, skill and diligence, along with a fit nature.^²¹

The nature of a guardian in the city is similar to that of a “noble puppy.” Both must be swift and strong in body, and spirited in soul, that they may be able to fight well.^²² In order that their savage nature may not be turned on their own, they must also be gentle, and able to distinguish between their enemies and their charges. This is done by learning one and not the other—such a nature must be a “lover of learning, since it defines what's its own and what's alien by knowledge and ignorance.”^²³ Therefore the guardian class must be philosophic by nature.

The best regime grows slowly in discussion, but here it begins to quicken and take a shape distinct from the previous conventions Socrates' interlocutors have known. The sound of the education, “gymnastic for bodies and music for the soul”^²⁴ is familiar, but the final form Socrates will give to it will be unlike anything found in the world. Music, as normal, comes before gymnastic, with tales being taught before exercises. Tales, Socrates says, are false speeches, with some truth in them.^²⁵ Children are not born able to chew solid food, nor are they any more capable of digesting straight truth. It must be fed to them in a form they can understand—but fed it must be. The education of the guardian class is vital to the city, perhaps the most vital thing, as Socrates says, for “at that stage it's most young and plastic and each thing assimilates itself to the model whose stamp anyone wishes to give it.”^²⁶ The stamp analogy is particularly apt—though the children (and later the auxiliaries themselves) cannot comprehend the truth itself, they can understand an image of it in stories, and just as care must be taken with wax both that its nature be pure and that the stamp in it be accurate, so too the stories the children hear must be in accordance with the ones they are to have later in life.^²⁷ The stories they hear must be good, and strengthen their natures for their later duties.

In this one sees what is meant by music. It is not simply melody, but the sum of all the arts of the Muses: literature and culture, stories and songs and myth. Music is the whole of the arts which shape the imagination and the hearts of men. The nurses are to “shape their souls with tales more than their bodies with hands.”^²⁸ The bad tales are to be thrown out and the good ones approved. This means removing many of the stories of Homer and Hesiod for being both false and bad, “just as a painter who paints something that doesn't resemble the things whose likeness he wished to paint;”^²⁹ false and fine tales are acceptable as they teach good things. The tales of gods doing injustice cannot be told to young children, even if they were true.^³⁰ The guardians must think it shameful to be angry or quarrel with each other, and cannot be allowed to receive wrong influences because “what [a child] takes into his opinions at that age has a tendency to become hard to eradicate and unchangeable.”^³¹

Appropriate tales must teach of the divine as it truly is: good, never harmful, and thus not responsible for evil, and thus not responsible for most of the affairs of men.^³² What is best and strongest is also least mutable, Socrates argues, with regard to tools, bodies and gods themselves. The divine being the best thing, it must be unchanging entirely.^³³ Thus the poets' songs about gods transforming themselves and deceiving men must be done away with as false images.^³⁴

The purpose of musical education in the best regime is to inculcate virtue and bring the soul to a proper harmony,^³⁵ and as the guardian class is to be courageous, it must not be exposed to stories which will create in it the fear of death or pain, but rather those which will cause it to fear shame far worse than death.^³⁶ So too the works of the poets about Hades must be eliminated,^³⁷ and laments for the dead allowed only for the men and women of the lower classes, so that the guardians will despise such attitudes toward death and be steadfast in the face of danger.^³⁸ “Speeches and deeds of endurance by famous men in the face of everything” are to be kept and praised for their effect on the souls of the guardians.^³⁹

Interestingly, the musical education here begins to serve not only to form the guardians, but to replace the wage-earner's art earlier mentioned as the reason for the guardians to practice their art of guarding. A guardian in the best regime protects the city not for a wage, but because that is what he has been taught to hold as right and honorable. In speeches and music about men, the guardians are to imitate only those sorts of men they are to be, and only in the modes appropriate to them, because of the rule of one man practicing the one art for which he is best suited by nature. The guardians must not imitate anything other than their own nature, because “imitations, if they are practiced continually from youth onwards, become established as habits and nature.”^⁴⁰

Speeches and plays about men are thus to be narrative when describing unworthy actions and only requiring acting and imitation for the worthy deeds and characters.^⁴¹ Because of this, the style of plays will be mostly in a single mode and rhythm, because the changes are small.^⁴² Again the best things are the least changing, and so good poetry will have only two modes: one for courageous and warlike deeds and one for moderate deeds of peace.^⁴³ Socrates points out after eliminating the many-toned (and therefore many-tasked and therefore excessive and unnecessary) instruments that the interlocutors have purged the city which used to be luxurious; Glaucon declares this a result of moderation—his previous desire for luxury is gone, redirected towards virtue.^⁴⁴ It was his soul, not his body, which lacked nourishment in the “city of sows.”

Not only the poets, but all craftsmen in the best regime will be subject to the standard of the good image: those who impress a bad disposition on their works will not be permitted in the city.^⁴⁵ Education is to produce the right kind of likes and dislikes; a man reared on beautiful things will love them and hate the ugly and ignoble things, so that before he can grasp reason, his heart will already be in line with it, and when it comes, he will recognize it.^⁴⁶ This balanced education will produce moderation,^⁴⁷ without the excesses of licentious or graceless things for the guardians to learn. The natural way of love, then, is a musical one and a moderate one, Socrates says, before moving on to the subject of gymnastic.^⁴⁸

Gymnastic is to train the body, but it is not nearly as prescriptive as music. Socrates is careful not to seek too much precision, opting instead for a few simple rules. To prevent their being weakened, the guardians must not get drunk, receive gifts and sweets, or have “Corinthian girls”. They must not be too finely tuned in body, lest they be unable to withstand the vagaries of their campaigns. To make them flexible, he sets down that the soldiers shall have irregular sleep schedules, so that they may be vigilant like hounds, and that they shall only eat roasted meat, eliminating excess baggage on their campaigns^⁴⁹—simplicity in their gymnastic, like the simplicity in their poetry, will produce health and moderation. Excess in music and in the care of the body produce licentiousness and illness respectively.^⁵⁰

The sign of a degenerate city, then, is a proliferation of doctors and judges.^⁵¹ “Excessive care of the body... hinders it just about more than anything,”^⁵² as illustrated in the example of Herodicus, who, afraid to die, managed to reach old age by the physician's art, but achieved little else in his life. This is contrasted with a carpenter who “soon says that he has no leisure to be sick nor is a life thus spent—paying attention to a disease while neglecting the work at hand—of any profit... [He] returns to his accustomed regimen; regaining his health he lives minding his own business; if his body is inadequate to bearing up under it, he dies.” The second man has a job to do, and his life is of no value if he does not do it.^⁵³ A man who cannot live according to his nature thus may as well not live at all.

Doctors in the best regime, then, must practice medicine in this fashion, and being familiar with all kinds of bodies and diseases (even in their own bodies, for “they [do not] care for a body with a body...but with a soul”^⁵⁴) care only for good bodies and souls, and let die the bad bodies as the judges put to death the bad souls.^⁵⁵ The judges themselves must be late to learn the natures of unhealthy souls, studying injustice “as something alien in alien souls, over a long time [becoming] thoroughly aware of how it is naturally bad, [making] use of knowledge, not his own personal experience.”^⁵⁶ The reason for such a harsh system is simple: the best regime is about the ideal way of life in accordance with nature. Those who cannot live according to nature have no place in it. Those who do live in it must be properly educated, their souls brought to a proper harmony.

Gymnastic tunes the body, but it also strengthens the spirited part of one's nature; if taken too far, or administered alone, it makes men savage.^⁵⁷ Music nourishes the philosophic part of a man's nature, but like fire applied to long to steel, too much of it softens the spirited part of man past the point of usefulness to soft weakness.^⁵⁸ Thus proper guardians will have both natures, and both nurtured in harmony, to produce courage and moderation together. ^⁵⁹

Having set down these “models of education and rearing,” Socrates next turns to “who among these men will rule and who be ruled.” He declares that the best of the guardians will rule and that these will be those most skillful at guarding the city. The best guards of the city must not only strong, but prudent and caring for the city. To care for it, they must love it, and “he [would] surely love something most when he believed that the same things are advantageous to it and to himself.”^⁶⁰ To this end, the young guardians must be watched, and those chosen from among them who most strongly and perseveringly hold the conviction that “one must do what is best for the city,” through all trials with grace and harmony.^⁶¹ These are to be called the true guardians, and the rest of the guardian class Socrates dubs “auxiliaries” to this ruling class.^⁶² As the auxiliaries were distinguished from the wage-earning class by their spirited nature, the wisdom of the rulers distinguishes them from those who are warriors simply.

To induce men to live in such an order, Socrates turns to the device of the noble lie. All the members of the city are taught that their education and upbringing were a dream, during which they and their arms and tools were made within the earth, their mother, who then gave birth to them. Thus they are to be bound to the land as their mother and to each other as brothers and sisters. A god, at this birth, mixed different metals into the souls of the different classes: into those of the rulers, gold; into those of the auxiliaries, silver; and into the souls of the artisans and farmers bronze and iron. Thus each man is to perform the task in accord with his soul's nature, and no iron or bronze soul may ever rule, for there is to be an oracle that the city will be destroyed if such is ever the case. The paramount duty of the rulers, then, is to watch the children and their education, ensuring that each nature finds its proper place in the city.^⁶³

The lie makes visible the invisible differences in the faculties of men. In the best regime, there is no conflict between nature and convention, but rather convention reinforces and strengthens nature. The first half of the lie renders conventional love of a particular city natural. The citizens of the best regime ought to love their fatherland because it is their mother. The business about taking land for the city,^⁶⁴ and the resulting origin of the guardian class are thus nicely avoided. The warriors are given a reason to protect, rather than to oppress, their fellow citizens. Though the second part of the lie allows no individual to transition between the classes, on a generational level there is social mobility. Gold-souled children can be born to farmers, and artisan-children to guardians. These children are to be treated according to their natures, not their parentages, and because the differences in nature are difficult to accept, Socrates invokes the agency of a god.

The noble lie also removes the cause of faction by creating unity of opinion concerning who should rule. Convention is employed to make this unity seem natural and divine, not because it is unnatural, but because those who must be ruled cannot see who is truly wise, or why wisdom ought to rule. If they could, they would be rulers. Like the child who cannot grasp pure truth, but must receive stories, the lower classes and the guardians are given the lie which tells truth (or nature) in a false (or conventional) way. By its use, however, the city can be unified, and this is its greatest good: to be as a single organism, the whole feeling the pain of any part. The happiness of the city is the citizen's greatest happiness. Each feels the city to be just because he believes that each member of the city gets what he deserves.

With this lie in place as the capstone to the warriors' education, Socrates implements a few final measures to safeguard against the possibility that these guard dogs will turn against their flock. They are to be provided with shelter and clothing and their material needs so as to have no cause to take them from the other citizens.^⁶⁵ This property is to be entirely in common, as is nearly the entire life of the warrior class, who will eat and live together.^⁶⁶ In addition, they are to be forbidden to possess silver or gold and told instead that the divine metal in their souls is better by far, and that they must not pollute it by possession of mortal metals.^⁶⁷

Adeimantus then objects on the grounds that the auxiliaries seem more like mercenaries without pay. He accuses Socrates of not making the guardians happy, particularly because they lack wealth and property.^⁶⁸ Socrates responds that the city is not organized for the happiness of any one class, but for the happiness of the whole,^⁶⁹ and furthermore, that a bad craftsman does not much damage a city, but establishing the guardians as not looking to the good of the city but to their own advantage would undo the city entirely.^⁷⁰ If the end is the happiness of the whole, the rulers and auxiliaries must each do their particular jobs, and “let nature assign to each of the groups its share of happiness,”^⁷¹ though their own happiness may turn out greater than that of those with less virtue.

For the good of the city, they must guard against wealth and poverty, as these two things produce worse arts and worse men, either through idleness or inability to perform one's tasks.^⁷² Furthermore, both introduce innovation, which is necessarily undesirable in the best regime. Just as the best things are unchanging, so is the best regime; the only change there can be from perfection is corruption. Guarding against poverty seems sensible to Adeimantus, but the prohibition of wealth confuses him.

War, he argues, is difficult to wage without wealth, especially against a wealthy and powerful enemy. Socrates' response is that the city will be like a well-trained warrior fighting lazy boxers with poor training. Such a scenario might well end in the warrior's favor, if he fights cannily.^⁷³ The best regime will be like a lean, ferocious dog among sheep. Who would choose to attack it, rather than the sheep? And if any would, the city will play its enemies off, offering to aid one against another, and allowing its ally to keep the spoils entirely.^⁷⁴ What enemy, Socrates asks, seeing nothing of value in the best regime, and being offered aid against its enemies, would choose to fight a war of no consequence and no benefit? The city will also send out the guardians to divide its enemies within themselves, seeing each enemy as many, divided along rich and poor and further within these, the guardians will offer the power and property of the one to the other and fracture their enemies before they ever mobilize against the fatherland.

This is the best regime's greatest strength: it is one. It is unified and integral, and in that respect it is the biggest of all cities, “even if it should be made up of only one thousand defenders.”^⁷⁵ This unity is what the rulers and auxiliaries must guard and defend.^⁷⁶ To this end, the guardians must share all things, including women and children.^⁷⁷ A city thus started will “roll on like a circle,” sound education producing sound natures.^⁷⁸ The primary task of the guardians thus turns out to be not war, but preventing innovation within the city itself,^⁷⁹ particularly in education and music, changes in which produce the greatest changes in the constitution of a city.^⁸⁰

Because of the good education in virtue, the inhabitants of the city will need few laws at its founding, and “most of these things that need legislation they will, no doubt, easily find for themselves.”^⁸¹ The practice of giving laws to address all wrongs is “cutting the heads off a Hydra” and to be avoided, because it accomplishes nothing in a bad regime and is unnecessary in a good one.^⁸² With this the laws concerning religion are left to the Delphic oracle, and the city is deemed founded.

Socrates then turns back to Glaucon's first question, concerning the nature of justice. The city, he declares, if it has been correctly founded, must be good, and thus wise, moderate, courageous and just. If three of these can be found in the city, he argues, the fourth must be what is left over.

The city as a whole is wise because of knowledge concerning the good of the city, which is found in the rulers.^⁸³ It is courageous because of the spirited element, the guardians, and its power of preservation, just as a man is brave because of his spiritedness and not his appetites or any other part.^⁸⁴ Moderation is “a certain kind of order and mastery of certain kinds of pleasures and desires,”^⁸⁵ in the sense that a man is “stronger than himself,” by which is meant the rule of the better part over the worse. This is clearly true of the city as a whole—all the classes participate in moderation by being ordered as they are, with wisdom ruling and spiritedness and appetite (the artisans and farmers) submitting to rule.^⁸⁶ As stated previously concerning musical education, Socrates says that moderation seems to be a kind of harmony or unison—the city is unified in opinion concerning who ought to rule (and because it brings about this virtuous unity, the noble lie is fine, not base like the destructive falsehoods of Homer and Hesiod).

All that is left after this is the rule laid down at the founding of the city that each man must have one and only one function, “that one for which is nature made him naturally most fit.” Thus justice is “minding one's own business” in a qualified sense. Interfering with the three classes of the city will lead to its destruction, Socrates argues, which is the greatest harm and therefore the greatest evil one could do to one's city. Doing the greatest evil to one's city he names injustice, and Glaucon agrees. Justice, being the opposite of injustice, turns out to be each class doing what it is fit for naturally.^⁸⁷

At last Socrates is able to return the discussion to Glaucon's initial demand for an account of the nature of justice in a man. Declaring that a thing is the same whether writ large or small, he searches for a justice in man the same as justice in a city. The human soul is found to have three elements in it, just as the city has; one part knows, another is spirited, and the third desires “pleasures and nourishment.”^⁸⁸ These three parts, in a well-ordered (and by implication well-educated) soul will serve the same functions as in the city. Reason rules over the passions and the spirited part is its auxiliary.^⁸⁹ Thus justice in a man is the same as in a city. A man with a rightly ordered soul “will be just and mind his own business.”^⁹⁰ Injustice in a man is next considered, and decided to be a wrong ordering of the soul. Justice and injustice are then established as health and sickness of the soul, just as health of the body is an establishing of its parts in a relationship of mastery and being mastered according to nature.^⁹¹ “Virtue, then, as it seems would be a certain health, beauty and good condition of a soul, and vice a sickness, ugliness and weakness.”^⁹²

With the nature of justice thus laid bare, Socrates moves to consider Glaucon's question as to which way of life is best. Glaucon interrupts him swiftly, declaring the obvious superiority of virtue and justice. He argues that if life is not worth living in a broken body, it cannot be conceived so if the “nature of that very thing by which we live is confused and corrupted.”^⁹³ Socrates agrees, but presses on to finish the argument. As he begins a discussion of the five possible regimes, however, Adeimantus jumps into the conversation.

Adeimantus challenges Socrates on the seemingly ludicrous impossibility of the best regime, in particular on the community of women and children. Socrates replied that he avoided it through fear of erring and dragging his friends down with him in his fall from truth.^⁹⁴ After some urging, he agrees to go on, and begins a comparison of the natures of men and women. Female hounds and male hounds make equally good guard dogs, and must receive the same education.^⁹⁵ So too must men and women receive the same education if they will given the same tasks. A man and a woman both suited for a particular craft, says Socrates, have the same nature, though different bodies, in the same way as two men do, though one may be bald and the other hairy.^⁹⁶ Likewise those have different natures that are fit for different tasks, as in the example of the man who is a doctor and the man who is a carpenter.^⁹⁷ Thus any woman fit for guarding must be given the same education in music and gymnastic, as fitting to her nature.^⁹⁸ Adeimantus assents, and Socrates, having escaped being swept away by the first wave, swims gamely on into the second.

Socrates describes the community of women and children as ideal because it unifies the guardian classes. The greatest evil for a city is faction and disunion, the cause of which is an overzealous love of one's own. The greatest good for the city (being opposite) is “what[ever] binds it together and makes it one” which is “the community of pleasure and pain...when to the greatest extent possible all the citizens alike rejoice and are pained at the same [things].”^⁹⁹ The best regime does not attempt to control the effects of faction, but rather to eliminate its causes. The community of women and children creates a single shared family just as the noble lie creates a single shared opinion as to who should rule. The best city is governed “most like a single human being...that community tying the body together with the soul in a single arrangement under the ruler within it.”^¹⁰⁰

The second wave escaped, Glaucon asks Socrates whether it is truly possible for the best regime, thus far founded in speech, to come about in practice. Socrates answers that this is the third wave, and the most difficult. “Unless,” he says, “political power and philosophy coincide in the same place... there is no rest from ills... nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible, and see the light of the sun [sic].”^¹⁰¹

What follows is an account of the philosopher. He must seek and obtain knowledge, which depends on what is, rather than opinion, which depends on what is becoming (or ignorance, which depends on what is not).^¹⁰² The philosopher is able to catch sight of both what is real and what participates in it, understanding fair things but also the fair itself.^¹⁰³ They love the knowledge of what is, of things unchanging.^¹⁰⁴ Like a true pilot on a mutinous ship where each man seeks to seize the rudder for himself, it would be exceedingly strange for a philosopher to be honored,^¹⁰⁵ and this is part of the difficulty of the third wave—persuading men to follow a philosopher is extremely difficult.

Equally difficult is finding a true philosopher in the first place. The nature is extremely rare,^¹⁰⁶ exceptionally bad when giving a bad upbringing^¹⁰⁷ and if by the intervention of a god he grows well in an imperfect regime he is unlikely to seek power, but rather to content himself with quietly practicing justice and contemplation.^¹⁰⁸ Thus, says Socrates, “neither city nor regime will become perfect, nor yet will a man become perfect... before some necessity chances to constrain those few philosophers who aren't vicious... to take charge of a city, whether they want to or not, and the city to obey.” He denies that this is impossible, though very hard.^¹⁰⁹ It would require that the philosophers wipe clean the slate of a city and remake it.^¹¹⁰

Socrates then picks up the subject of the rulers and their nature. They must be proven lovers of the city, he says, and what's more they must be philosophers.^¹¹¹ Such gifted men must be quick, and not carried away, steady but not unmoved by teaching.^¹¹² His education must culminate in the study of the greatest thing, the idea of the Good itself.^¹¹³ The Good can perhaps be understood by its offspring, the sun. “As the good is in the intelligible realm, with respect to intelligence and what is intellected, so the sun is in the visible region with respect to sight and what is seen.”^¹¹⁴ The sun gives life and light to the visible world—without it men not only would have no sight, but no life. Similarly the idea of the Good itself not only illumines the world of intellect, but sustains it in existence and by the intelligible and unchanging realities of the forms, the visible and changing material world as well.^¹¹⁵ The idea of the Good, however, is itself greater in dignity and beauty than the knowledge, truth and reality it provides and sustains.^¹¹⁶ Socrates further explains what the philosopher must know in the analogy of the divided line.

The lower half the line, representing the visible realm, is divided itself in two. At the bottom are images and shadows and appearances, which correspond to the powers of imagination, and above them are the things in the visible world, such as trees and animals, which correspond to the power of trust or belief. The “ruler” of the visible world is the sun, by which all the things in it have their life and are perceived. Above the sun, the upper half the line is also divided. Its lower portion is filled with hypotheses and mathematics, which, like the images in the visible world, attempt to represent the forms and realities themselves in the upper half. A mathematician's theorem's about a perfect square are in the lower half, which corresponds to thought; the square itself is placed with the just itself, and the beautiful and all other forms, in the top portion of the line, which is the section of things contemplated or intelligible. Above the line entirely is the idea of the Good itself, which is the ultimate end of all knowledge. The higher the position of a thing on the line, the greater its participation in truth and in clarity.^¹¹⁷

Socrates follows the divided line with the allegory of the cave, in which men are held prisoner in a cave, with their eyes fixed forward on a wall, upon which they see shadows. These shadows are cast by puppets and statues held before a fire high behind them, but because the men cannot look at anything but the shadows on the wall, they assume them to be reality. A man released from his bonds and made to look at the light would be uncomfortable and pained, and would have difficulty believing that what he thought real was merely a collection of images. Dragged screaming to the surface, his disorientation would increase, but with time and training, he would be able to look first on the shadows of trees, then on the trees and things on the surface themselves, then at the stars and finally at the sun itself. He would conclude the sun to be the illuminating sustainer and source of all things, and would desire nothing more than to contemplate it for all his days. But if he were forced to return to the cave, and his vision dimmed because of the sudden darkness, he would be mocked and disbelieved about both the things in the cave and on the surface.^¹¹⁸ The cave corresponds to the visible realm and its fire to the sun. The prisoner's journey is that of the soul turning towards the intelligible realms until at last, with utmost difficulty, it sees the idea of the Good, “[concluding] that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything...and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it.”^¹¹⁹

The education of the philosopher, therefore, is the art of turning the soul around to face reality.^¹²⁰ To this end, he is trained in things which “summon the intellect,” beginning with mathematics, progressing through geometry, astronomy, harmony and finally to dialectic, which is the art that releases a man from his bonds in the cave and leads him up to the intelligible world.^¹²¹ It is because of this knowledge, this having seen the Good itself, that the philosopher ought to rule and does not want to. He would prefer nothing but to contemplate it, but for the sake of the city and its happiness, not his own, he must be forced back down into the cave, the city telling him that he has been born to rule and must go down into the cave, where he will perceive the phantoms each for what it is, because of his having seen the truth about the fair, the just and the Good. Thus the city will be governed well.^¹²²

Education is the most important institution in the best regime, then, not because it produces warriors, though the warrior education is vital, but because it produces philosopher-kings. It is so powerful and vital that all but the philosophers must be kept from dialectic, and even those must only be exposed to it at the proper age, because the young tend either to abuse or be shaken by dialectic when they come upon it too early.^¹²³ From age thirty to thirty-five the philosophers study dialectic, after which they spend fifteen years in war and public office. At fifty years of age, the philosopher-kings are allowed to spend most of their time contemplating, with the remainder spent teaching their replacements before they are allowed to totter off to the Blessed Isles.^¹²⁴

After setting down the aim and education of the philosophers, Socrates is at last able to address the question of the best way of life. At the end of his analysis of the cycle of regimes, he comes to the examination of tyranny, the most unjust of regimes. Given power by the people on the promise of fulfilling their desires, he rises to defend them against the wealthy, and promises to forgive debts and distribute land, while making cases against the wealthy.^¹²⁵ Tyrants then, having secured their immediate power, seem always two pursue two courses: the first, to start a war to maintain the people's dependence on himself, and second, to do away with all those able to threaten or criticize his power, including “some of those who helped in setting him up and are in power.”^¹²⁶ And so tyrants, says Socrates, always purge a city of the best men in it, and bring in foreigners and mercenaries. He despoils those with wealth or power and takes it for himself, even that of his own father, becoming, like Zeus, a friendless paranoid parricide.^¹²⁷

Book IX is Socrates' answer to the questions of Glaucon. The tyrant is shown to be a slave to his own desires,^¹²⁸ shameless and unjust in his pursuit of them,^¹²⁹ and unable to fulfill them. Men correspond to cities, and the tyrant is, like his city, crushed beneath the weight of the smallest and worst part inside him, his soul “filled with much slavery and illiberality, and [furthermore] those parts of it that are most decent [are] slaves while a small part, the most depraved and maddest, [is] master.”^¹³⁰ So the tyrant's soul, as a whole, is least able to do what it wants, but is “full of confusion and regret,” driven about by its master desire, “always poverty-ridden and insatiable... full of fear.”^¹³¹ He cannot be satisfied, and is a slave to his fears and appetites.^¹³² Compared with the joy found by the philosopher-king in contemplation of the good, he seems the most wretched of men. But Socrates is yet unfinished.

There are three kinds of pleasure, according to the parts of the soul, but only the lover of wisdom learns truth, and so only he is capable of saying which type of pleasure, or way of life is in reality best, and he names his own.^¹³³ Having shown justice superior to injustice a second time, he adduces a third proof: the just man, loving wisdom over honor or gain, gains knowledge of what is, and lives a fuller and richer life than the lover of honor or of gain (both of whom are unjust, having an improperly ordered soul).^¹³⁴ Justice proving superior to injustice a third time, Socrates declares that the just man's happiness can be measured against the misery of the tyrant. The tyrant is third from the oligarch in his happiness (inclusive) who in turn is third from the king. Three by three is nine, and this raised to the third power for the three triumphs of justice over injustice yields the result, Socrates says, that the king “lives 729 times more pleasantly” than the tyrant.^¹³⁵

With the nature of justice revealed as each minding his own business according to nature, and justice proved stronger than injustice, Socrates turns to his last task: defending justice against injustice in spite of an opposite reputation. To answer this, he conjures the image of a beast of many heads (the desires), a lion (the spirited part of the soul) and a man (the reason) joined together.^¹³⁶ This combination is then made to take the shape of a human being, who will be either just or unjust, without regard to reputation. To be unjust, says Socrates, is to feed the beast and the lion, and to have the man himself dragged around at their whim. The man who does justice, however, makes the man strong to tame the heads of the beast and subdue them when necessary by means of the lion, his natural ally, so that all three may live in union together, rather than disunion.^¹³⁷

The argument is explained simply: by doing injustice, a man “enslaves the best part of himself to the most depraved.... the most divine part of himself to the most godless and polluted part.”^¹³⁸ It profits a man nothing to get away with injustice, because it disfigures his soul.^¹³⁹ A wise man will constantly guard the regime within him to keep it rightly ordered,^¹⁴⁰ just as a wise man will keep his body rightly ordered. Glaucon realizes that such a man may abstain from political things, save in the best regime, and still maintain his justice. Socrates tempers this. “In heaven,” he says, “perhaps a pattern is laid up for the man who wants to see and found a city within himself on the basis of what he sees. It doesn't make any difference whether it is or will be somewhere. For he would mind the things of this city alone and of no other.”^¹⁴¹ Justice, thus understood, is not simply mightier than injustice, but it is the nature of man himself. Man, to be man and not a beast, must be ordered justly, with the head ruling the belly through the chest.

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De Civitate Condita I : De Defensione Rerum Novarum Americanarum

2009-06-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

I have heard more than one person argue that the American Revolution was biblically unjustifiable.

The argument usually invokes one of the following passages: Matthew 22:20-21,
Romans 13:1-7, or 1 Peter 2:13-7, and takes the form:

We are to obey the human institutions of government.
The Crown and Parliament were the legitimate government.
Game over: colonists lose, Crown wins.

There are several problems with this argument, which arrogantly presumes to "solve" with a simple syllogism a crisis which humbled far greater men. I will attempt to give the argument from the other side, as it were.

To begin, the legislatures in the colonies were well established, both known to and approved by the British Crown. More importantly, the (unwritten) British constitution was ambiguous as to the nature of the relationship between the colonial parliaments and Parliament in London.

Was the freedom from taxation except by legislative consent in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 a guarantee of the British right of representation, or of the authority of the Houses of Parliament in London? Did 1689 grant Englishmen the right to be governed by laws of their own consent, or did it grant London the right to govern the empire?

Those in the colonies generally held the former understanding. Consider this resolution (among others) by the "Stamp Act Congress,"

"That all supplies to the crown, being free gifts of the people, it is unreasonable, and inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the British Constitution, for the people of Great Britain to grant to his Majesty the property of the colonies [emphasis mine] ."

The Stamp Act of 1765 was repealed--evidence the colonies could argue tenably that the legitimate governing authority lay in their own legislatures, despite Parliament making equally tenable arguments on its own behalf.

It should be well noted that the Declaration of Independence was not a sudden thing, but the end of a long transatlantic conversation. Its final paragraphs speak of colonial appeals to the king and to the British people regarding the jurisdiction of London.

The great accusation of the Declaration is not that the colonists have had their substance eaten out by taxes and officers, but that the King of Great Britain has undermined the very rule of law in the colonies, obstructing, neglecting and dismantling the legislatures which were their right as British subjects.

Romans 13 does not speak to constitutional questions of legitimacy. It tells us that as individual believers and as a Church, we ought to obey legitimate authority. The Declaration was not petulant rebellion against "the governing authorities" but a last attempt to preserve the rule of law as the Founders understood it.

Musings on North Korea

2009-06-09T06:21:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks, North Korea has been rather testy. Choleric man that I am, my first reaction was simple and visceral. Why, I thought, do we not give this tinpot tyrant the thrashing he seems to want? But a moment's reflection led me this consideration: such a reaction was not humble, it was irritable. It certainly was not an example of wisdom or prudence. But it was not meant to be a reasoned suggestion to call my representatives about. It was mere impatience.

I have a civilian's knowledge of the situation, but North Korea, as I understand it, cannot hit Japan, let alone the United States, with a missile. I asked myself what need there was to do anything at all. When a younger kid on the playground shakes his angry fists, how did we deal with it? We ignored him. Those who taunt because they cannot do always want a reaction. Why grant them one?

Pondering this, I thought about other ways to deal with bullies. Sure, there is the “fight them to the bitter end” method, but I try to see that as a last resort. What does Kim Jong Il expect from us? Sanctions, stern memos, and in his more martial moments, perhaps an invasion? What does he not expect?

Kindness.

Kindness is the antidote to a great many poisonous people. I have seen “enemies” become my friends through a little honesty and a charitable response. I wonder what might happen if the United States were to fly bombers over North Korea. These planes, though, would drop two foot packages filled with medicine, vitamins and foodstuffs into the fields and villages of the country.

How would Kim Jong Il respond? What would his people do? Would the eyes of Europe widen to see America do something so charitable? Assuming we can evade their air defenses, a government that can “find” nearly a trillion dollars in less than a year surely can find the money. Last I heard, a pound of food was cheaper than one of ammunition. That would be change I could believe in.

But would it be a change? I am not convinced. American foreign policy has always been driven by more than mere self-interest. I am not interested in attempting here to disentangle them, but our ideals have always been present in our grand strategy.

Why is it that we bar nations like North Korea from developing into nuclear powers? Is it that we do not want to open Pandora's Box any wider than it has been already? Is it more cynical—a simple refusal to share power unnecessarily? Or is the reason something more justified, more noble? I believe it is.

We hold certain truths to be self-evident in America. We believe that men are not beasts, and should not be treated as such. We believe that the natural rights of man are “written as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”¹ American government is founded on these principles, and ardently, tragically, clumsily or heroically, Americans have borne their ideals of liberty wherever their flag has gone. Our fierce opponents in the Second World War are now firm friends. Why? If we ponder the differences between the countries that border the Sea of Japan, we begin to understand our own opposition to North Korea's nuclear program.

It is not a question of mere power politics. It is a question of principle. America stands against tyranny and slavery, and will lightly allow such a regime to grow powerful. Praise or decry their expansion as we may, the ideals of the Declaration are the heart of American foreign policy.

1 Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775