The Thomas Chronicles

I’ve yet another little tidbit to talk about. As I said previously, I’ve recently been listening to radio broadcasts, but in the course of my search for old time radio, I discovered that someone has done a podcast for Plato’s Republic… in its entirety! It’s been roughly nine years since I last read the Republic, and I discovered that the arguments and reasonings are just as insightful and profound as when I first read it. Perhaps more so, not least because I am not the same man I was when I first read it. Needless to say, I pounced gleefully into it arms and legs and all.

In any case, this passage struck me this morning as I closed in toward the end of Book One, and I’m going to use this as the starting point of my observation:

Instead he asks to be paid for it, because the man who is going to practise his craft well, never does or orders what is best for himself, when he issues orders in accordance with his art, but always what is best for his subjects. For this reason, it seems, potential rulers must be paid in one of three sorts of coinage: money, or honor, or punishment for refusing.

What are you saying, Socrates? said Glaucon. The first two modes of payment make sense, I suppose, but what the punishment is I don’t quite see, or how a punishment can even be a payment.

You mean that you don’t understand the nature of this payment which, to the best men, is the greatest inducement of all to take up the reins of power? Of course you know that ambition and greed are held to be, and indeed are, disgraceful?

I do, he said.

This, I said, is why the best men are not willing to rule for the sake of money or honor; they don’t wish to be seen openly demanding payment for service in government; that would earn them the name of hired hand; nor do they wish to earn the name of thief, by dipping their hand in the public till. Not being ambitious they do not care about honor. As a result of all this, a yoke of compulsion and penalty must be laid upon their necks, if they are to consent to rule. And this, I imagine, is the reason why willingly seeking office, when one might have waited to be compelled, has been deemed dishonorable. For the essence of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to end up being ruled by one worse than himself. The way I look at it, fear of this bad result makes the good take office, whenever they do, and then they approach it, not as something good or in the expectation of enjoying themselves, but as a necessary evil since they are unable to foist off the chore of ruling on anyone as good or better than themselves. Indeed, if there were a city entirely peopled by good men, we might well find men would contend as eagerly to avoid public office as they do here to obtain it. In that place it would become quite clear that the nature of the true ruler is not to look after his own interests, but rather those of his subjects; and every one who knew this would choose rather to receive a benefit from another, instead of being put to the trouble of conferring them all around. So I am about as far as it is possible to be from agreeing with Thrasymachus that justice is the interest of the stronger.

(the emphasis is mine)

I remember a historian remarking once how in the early years of our Republic we had this very same ethos in politics. As a matter of fact, this is one of the main reason why Aaron Burr garnered the disapproval of many of his contemporaries. For this unacquainted with Burr, he was the disgraced former Vice President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson and who fled the United States after his infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton.

Since the founding of our country all the way to the Civil War, it was thought unseemly for men to actively lobby for political office. You didn’t campaign for President, your peers chose and elevated you into the national limelight because of your many accomplishments. Consequently, ambitious men kept their aspirations to themselves. What earned Aaron Burr the disapproval of his peers, perhaps even more than his constant philandering, was how he actively lobbied for the Presidency when he and Jefferson was tied in the Electoral College. If I remember the story correctly, Jefferson retired back to Monticello and awaited the verdict, while Burr stayed in tried to persuade and gather votes in the House of Representatives. This smelled of rank ambition, and people noticed.

Well into the early 20th century the rank and file of America regarded political ambitions and politicians in generals as closely akin to prostitution. As the quote above from Socrates pointed out, a city of good men would have trouble in finding candidates for elected offices. They’d all be unambitious and wouldn’t have aspirations to elected office.

Contrast this with our current politics where men and women claw over each other for even minor offices. It’s clear that we are not in short supply of ambitious men and women. The good men, content in their homes are not out burning up the campaign trail.

We may, in fact, have a great many good men in our midsts, but good, unlike evil, are not as conspicuous and it rarely draws attention to itself.

I would dearly like for us to return to that ethos where ambition is shunned. But I believe we are sailing into the End Times, and gleaming white virtue doesn’t seem to be its defining characteristic.

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