Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard these guardians?)
Although often attributed to a quote or paraphrase from Plato's Republic, it does not explicitly appear in that work. The version we are familiar with is attributed -- with some debate -- to the Roman poet Juvenal, where the guards in question are guaranteeing the marital fidelity of women (apparently men didn't need similar guards, which suggests Juvenal had a thing or two to learn). The question is inherently unanswerable, but for centuries, many have offered their own "solutions". Today's crop of radical reformers, parading under the ludicrously inaccurate banner of "conservatism", includes people like Kevin Roberts, who wants government to decide when women should have children (the more the merrier), and Curtis Yarvin and his billionaire backer Peter Thiel who want to replace American democracy with a (presumably all-wise) absolute dictator. In short, we are to place the power to make all the important decisions in our lives (or at least the most important ones) in the hands of strangers who have been given the power to make these judgments based on --- what, exactly ? Why believe these (mostly) unnamed authorities are more knowledgeable or more capable of good judgment than free adult citizens ? Religions pull the ultimate pass-the-buck here by saying their leaders take orders from an all-powerful, all-knowing deity, but they can't agree on even the basics of what this deity (or deities, depending) has to say. So why should we think some "conservative"-approved functionary -- let's call him (you know it'll be a him) the "National Nanny" -- is going to be better at the job than the people actually doing the job now ? If their choices of leaders so far are any indication, I'd say all indicators are that that would be a VERY, very, very BAD IDEA.
People have been struggling with this idea for millennia. What gives these looniest of the lunatic fringe (i.e. the heart of the current GOP) the hubris to hold that suddenly, they, alone in the history of mankind, have got it all figured out ? That they, have at last, something which they can barely restrain themselves (for now) from calling "The Final Solution"?
I don't often quote scripture, but when I do I look it up first, and sometimes discover that the usual "quote" is in error, or at least incomplete. So this time. The quote I actually found was this:
Proverbs 16:18 (KJV)
It's a more insightful proverb than I realized, because it doesn't place any limits on who, or what, gets destroyed.
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