re: #968 CIA Reject

According to Churchill it is the worst of all forms of government- except for all the others!

True, of course. But I think Aristotle there was on to something.

As the great mass of humanity is poor (that is, barely able, except by unstinting effort, to keep body and soul together and a roof overhead), rule by the numbers necessarily is rule by the poor.

As poverty precludes the requisite freedom to learn and practice the full range of human excellences (the virtues), the poor are perhaps most dangerous, because there are so many of them, their need is so great, and there is nothing to prevent them putting out their hand to relieve their distress with the apparatus of the state.

A republic is safest, as it avoids oppressing the poor without empowering them. The hope is that the natural aristocracy (of virtue) can be constituted in this way. The further we move from a republic, the more dangerous we become.