In Plato’s Republic, Socrates describes democracy as a dangerous system prone to tyranny, a view later echoed by Aristotle. Democracy, as commonly understood today, was often associated with mob rule.
- "Does democracy destroy itself through its excessive greed for the very good it defines as its highest value?"
- "What good do you mean?"
- "Freedom," I said. "Because, in my view, in a democratic city, you will hear that freedom is the greatest good, and for this reason alone, anyone would want to live there."
- "Yes," he said, "this is said, and very often."
- "But isn’t it," I continued, "precisely this greed for freedom and the neglect of everything else that transforms a democracy into something else, something that eventually prepares the way for tyranny?"
- "How so?" he asked.
- "When a democracy, in its insatiable thirst for freedom, finds itself with reckless leaders acting as poor wine-pourers, they intoxicate the people with an excess of unrestrained liberty. And when the rulers fail to grant even more freedom, they are punished, denounced as corrupt and oligarchic."
- "Yes, indeed, that happens," he agreed.
- "Citizens who still respect authority are scorned as servile and unworthy, while those who behave like rulers, even though they are subjects, are praised both publicly and privately. Doesn’t this excessive freedom inevitably push the democracy to its most extreme state?"
- "How could it not?"
- "And, my friend," I said, "this chaos eventually enters people’s homes - until even the animals become anarchic."
- "What do you mean?" he asked.
- "Well," I said, "fathers begin to act like children, fearing their own sons. Sons treat their fathers as equals, showing neither respect nor fear - so they can be ‘free.’ Foreigners and metics (resident aliens) begin to claim equal rights with citizens. And citizens become indistinguishable from foreigners."
- "That is true," he admitted.
- "And there is even more," I continued. "In such a city, teachers fear their students and try to appease them, while students mock their teachers and disregard their authority. The young demand to be treated as equals to the old, even challenging them in speech and actions. And the elders, seeking to fit in, lower themselves to the level of the youth, engaging in jokes and imitating them, fearing they might seem ‘out of touch’ or ‘tyrannical.’"
- "Absolutely," he agreed.
- "But the height of this abuse of freedom is when slaves demand the same rights as their masters, and women claim absolute equality with men in all things, and vice versa."
Plato's Republic, Book VIII (562b-c, 563b)
- "For unrestrained liberty seems to lead to nothing else but the most extreme slavery, both for the individual and for the city."
- "Of course," he said.
- "Then, by natural consequence, tyranny arises from no other political system than democracy; from unlimited freedom comes the greatest and most brutal form of servitude."
- "That certainly makes sense," he said.
Plato’s Republic (564a)
Unlimited freedoms, when untethered from any shared moral order or reciprocal restraint, devolves inexorably into tyranny through the very mechanisms it claims to liberate. In the absence of limits, liberty mutates into raw license. The strong exploit the weak without consequence, appetites run unchecked, and society fragments into a war of all against all where no one’s rights are truly secure.
Today's democracy is dangerous. Someone can be a traitor, publicly shout that he wants to destroy his own country, kill his political opponents, and replace you racially and culturally because he hates himself, and yet he remains free to harm you and the future of your nation. Today's democracy protects him and may even reward him. When patience finally runs out, the new generations will seek an authoritarian leader. Don't act surprised about what drove them there. It will be the fault of your own impunity and stupidity.
Homer Pavlos