And they don’t get the irony that when Reagan said that he was president–a representative of an extremely large amount of government power concentrated in a single person.
Then again Reagan himself obviously wasn’t aware that he was saying, “I can’t be trusted.”
ETA: I see you made the same point more eloquently with “That’s what gets me most about that quote… you’re taking it to heart, when it was said by someone who was leading the government at the time, and who was trying to convince people that his version of help was the best…”
Plato was a Virtue Ethicist, so his account was that extensive and life-long physical, moral, and intellectual training and the philosopher-king could realize enough moderation, courage, and wisdom, and that if someone was moderate, brave, and wise they could be just. His rejection of democracy was a metaphor tied to weighing virtues equally rather than seeing them as a hierarchy. It’s interesting for what it is, but the reading as a political manifesto’s just a misreading of a long difficult work that ignore’s Book II and Book VIII telling readers not to read the book the way it typically is. The philosopher-king is a metaphor for the realization of those virtues. It was once one of my aggravations, since he explains both at the beginning and end that the work is specifically a metaphorical exercise to try to understand moderation, courage, wisdom, and justice as virtues, but since it’s a 500ish page difficult to translate, convoluted, complicated Greek drama of people discussing an extended metaphor, it’s not so surprising it’s often misunderstood as a political work.
If I learned anything from Left Behind it’s that the Antichrist knows Biblical scripture inside and out. Trump claims to love the Bible even more than The Art of the Deal but when pressed he couldn’t name a single thing in it. Disqualified.
