Platonistic Consistency

If you can recall, over at my brother blog Musing Aloud I asked the question as to whether or not the philosophy of Plato might be to blame for politicians going forward with their agenda despite massive public opposition towards them. Myrhaf over at The New Clarion presents us with an excruciatingly insightful post titled The Perks of Power which is a good elaboration and further concretization of the points I mentioned in my own post.

In short, the "hypocrisy" that political commentators love to point out about certain politicians and public officials isn't true hypocrisy; it is entirely consistent with their worldview. By holding the belief that there is a specific individual (revealed by revelation) supernaturally ordained to lead, they believe themselves to be above the dictates of the rules they call for since they're the ones that make the rules. Since revelations aren't valid means of cognition, you end up with the result of multiple public figures believing that they had the revelation that they are the chosen one and therefore above the rules. (Paraphrasing Leonard Peikoff: how does such a person know his revelations are true? He feels it. How does he know his emotions have truth value? He feels it.)

Such "hypocrisy" is going to continue to be a regular occurrence in politics until bad philosophies are uprooted.