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Oh, dang, I missed the Plato discussion. This is a shame because I think you’re misreading a crucial part of it. Specifically here; the last time I made this argument (to @MaiqTheTrue) is here.
In short, I think aging philosophers have been complaining about libertine, shiftless youth for literal millennia, but the predictions rarely come true. Athens was perfectly able to go to war, elect new leaders, corral its livestock, etc. up until they got subjugated by an outside tyrant. Though if you’ve made a case for the decline of virtue in Classical Athens, I’d be interested in seeing it.
More importantly, the argument proves way too much. I could go down your tyrant checklist and fish for ways to make the prophecy fit Donald Trump, a textbook oligarch waving the flag of populism. Would that really be useful?
Accusing bureaucrats of being “accursed oligarchs” is a time-honored tradition in American politics. So is “commend[ing] and honor[ing] in public and private rulers who resemble subjects and subjects who are like rulers.” The humble, wise Everyman is one of our stock characters for an ideal statesman. That makes it kind of pointless to draw your enemies as the soyjak.
I wanted to discuss Plato because I think that post was a lot more interesting than this one. You are not the first person to write an essay about how your opponents are Literally Hitler. This isn’t even your first time playing the lazy DRRR game. (Though I see you made the same mistake as me with regards to Byrd. The man turned it around in the 80s and became a hugely influential civil rights supporter.) The Democrat agenda had thoroughly shifted by the Reagan years, and pretending otherwise is a cheap rhetorical trick.
I was going to disagree that it fits into this pattern, because when I read the Plato post it seemed to include antinomianism even in its unselfish forms, which is not usually found in the degeneration narratives, or much at all before modern times... but I cant see it anymore today. I notice that I am confused.
How did you find this? Is there an advanced search for this site?
In this case, I searched for “author:netstack Southern”. Be careful not to capitalize “author”. There are a few other search keywords like that; I think “flair” is one? Not sure if it’s documented anywhere.
Anyway, I was able to search for that because I knew I’d reminded someone that the Southern Strategy existed. I wasn’t sure if it was OP until I thumbed through.
What exactly were you looking for vis a vis “unselfish antinomianism”? I think that’s still a fair reading of Socrates’ lines, given the emphasis on liberty as an abstract good.
Compare on the one hand, the stereotypical wild youngin, who will tell you your lectures about virtue are boring, Im going to do dumb shit now, fuck you dad. And on the other hand, the kind of slightly-OCD knowitall, who is offended by the idea of virtue in full generality because it implies some people are better than others. The stably married educated liberals preaching free love. Etc. This other hand is what I mean by "unselfish antinomianism", and its something we dont see a lot of before the modern era, including in degeneration narratives. Indeed, even today, those narratives often emphasise how they dont really mean those more ideological aspects, and its all just cover for hedonism/the jews taking over/whatever, where it had sounded to me like Plato says they do that and do mean it, and thats the problem.
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Never too late.
Plato was clearly not saying that this (libertine-ness) was happening at the time he wrote The Republic. He was saying that it happens from time to time in various places, and that where it happens it is a symptom of coming tyranny. He had already lived through one such cycle in his 20's, and another one happened in Athens about 75 years after he wrote the Republic. It seemed to happen about every 100 years. Also, I do not accept the argument that the regime of the Thirty Tyrants had nothing to do with the moral fabric of Athens (see below). To elaborate on the words of Col. Jeff Cooper, armed men with moral courage cannot be easily tyrannized, and men with moral courage in the first place cannot easily be disarmed.
Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn't. I'm not sure why you think Classical Athens was such a first world open society. Plato's Apology suggests that most people cooperated with the regime of the thirty tyrants as informers, as if the people of Athens, like Soviet Russia, was open to that sort of government by virtue of its failing values. The trial of Socrates happened in 399; that almost certainly a historical event, retold fairly accurately by Plato (since it is not contradicted by other sources, many of whom mention Socrates and were familiar with Plato's work). The trial related in The Apology not exactly a signal of a functioning democracy; it is a story of literally fatal cancel culture.
You could of course fish for that, or for an extended analogy between pinto beans and cardboard (they do kind of taste like cardboard, don't they?), or anything else you want to fish for. The trick is to actually do it -- and compare the two side by side. If you have the time I would be happy to see the results of your analogy with Trump.
Sorry. No idea what this means.
Depends on how accurate the drawing is, and what other attempts to draw the same comparison you hold it next to. The details matter, and the control groups matter.
Be my guest. I will respond to your replies to it (though they may not have a big audience)
I didn't say anyone was literally Hitler. Please be smarter than this.
This is beside the point. My point was that Byrd was forgiven for egregious racism in his distant past.
Also, I think you missed the salient point of the article on Plato. Plato obviously has a low opinion of the "democratic men" of his time, and was probably on the other side from them of the political aisle. Maybe they were right and he was wrong; that's perfectly possible and (note carefully that) I never made a claim about it. The main point is the resemblance between their agenda and that of modern progressives, which I find evidently uncanny.
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