Sunday, March 14, 2021

James Schall on Aristotle on America

Why sure!  

Fr. James Schall, sj (RIP) wrote on how Aristotle classified America's government structure.  Ol' Ari may be dead, but his brain observes very well.  Schall's essay is dated 2015 and this excerpt hardly mines the content.  HT:  Grim who has a Codevilla essay ALSO worth reading in the very same post!

...If we look at Aristotle’s political observations, he recognized a difference between those regimes that lived according to law, including natural or ethical law, and those that did not. Of the first group, we had those ruled by one good and wise man, one ruled by those few who were judged to be wise, and one ruled by the rest of the citizens who were able to rule themselves. The American founders sought to combine these three forms through laws about the office of president, the structure of congress, the courts, and the choices and interests of the people.

The disordered regimes—tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy—were regimes wherein the principle of rule was not virtue or right order in things but what the ruling principle wanted. The worst of these regimes was a tyranny. It invariably arose from a democracy. Again the tyrant might be well-spoken, handsome, and good family man, attentive to what the people wanted. But he was a philosopher-king gone wrong. He was not ruled by virtue and reason, but by his own ends and the shrewd rationale to put them into effect. So what is the point? In Aristotelian terms, we live under a wide-ranging tyranny that includes much of our academic and political classes as well as the relativism that explains the souls of our citizens....

So a tyranny is not necessarily a one-man show.  It could be (and is) a one-city show, with a few other cities as serious contributors (NYC, LA, Boston, etc.)   If you haven't already guessed, that Tyrant was also described as "The Prince":  one for whom the end justifies the means. 

This ain't looking good.

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