Rocket and Hammegk,
I wrote the following offline, after a quick review of the thread this morning. My impression from that was that Hammegk was advocating some form of Platonic 'guardiansim', which I can see now that he was not. He was, rather, taking Rocket to task for his apparent flirtation with it. So I think that we are all pretty much on the same page. But I will go ahead and paste what I wrote, as I think that it does have some relevance to our main topic. (Not to mention that, having spent a couple of hours on it, it would be hard now to bring myself to toss it):
Hammegk,
As noted in my reply to Rocket, I once felt as you do, and I would concede that your position has a lot of empirical justification. I had to reject it in the end because I found the empirical justification for our old saws – about ‘power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely’, and about ‘who will watch the watchers?’ – to be even stronger.
Platonic Guardians always end up falling for their own BS (about their being an intrinsically superior class) and always end up despising their human ‘sheep’. Their behavior becomes more and more egregious until their society collapses in bloodshed, either through internal revolution, or through ‘liberation’ from without. This is happening right now in Washington. We are pretty far into the cycle, and the book that is providing (by their own oft repeated admissions) the main philosophical underpinning for our present administration is Leo Straus’ ‘The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism’. Perhaps the best written and most seductive invitation to guardianism that has been produced since Plato’s death.
If government ‘from above’ can be seen not to work, then government from below (democracy) is our only choice. I hate this. I’m a natural elitist if ever there was one. But I can see, I think, what Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison saw. That in order to be sustainable it has got to come from ‘the proles’. The guardian’s ancient siren song: ‘Just make me your ruler, and I will take care of all the rest’ has always played well. But I intend to throw an enormous monkey wrench into this if I can. If I can get the exposure, and the understanding and support of my heroes, like Dawkins and Wilson, then I will go after our guardians and their ‘Myth of the Metals’. I will blow their cover at a level that will cause them to remember Machiavelli with fondness, and I will strip away the shield that now protects their absurd theism from the healthy daylight of reason. Then we’ll see about the people. They once knew how to listen to men like Swift, Voltaire, and Paine, and to elect the men who wrote our Constitution. The Enlightenment happened once, so it can happen again. But this time we won’t blow it. We’ll go ahead and achieve the original Enlightenment’s goal.
I’ve said enough for now. Probably enough to qualify for a straight jacket (or perhaps for a ‘traffic accident’, or ‘massive heart attack’ if our guardians are monitoring through their Patriot Act powers). But I’ll field questions if there are any.
BR,
Keith
Hammegk, To reiterate: I do understand now that the above is not in answer to your position. In fact, that it is probably more like an agreement with it.
