S. is on its way to chaos, anarchy and a national catastrophe. The pursuit of individual freedom without respect for authority will eventually lead to these consequences. What keeps U.S. strong and independent is that free enterprise and not the illusion of a contemporary democracy. A basic difficulty in American democracy is its attempt to mitigate all the aspects of negative human nature. Criminals are given equal rights as honorable individuals. Dysfunctional citizens are given thorough protection by the Constitution and allowed to practice their negative behavior in the same environment as honorable and conscientious citizens, shielded equally by laws and served by greedy lawyers and the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. These 10 amendments undermine the teachings of the Ten Commandments and thus destabilize the foundations of the Republic. The prevailing hypocrisy of democracy has been weakening the republic and will eventually lead to the decline and fall of the much envied American way of life. Another basic weakness of the current American democracy is the fact that only 40-50% of its eligible population actually casts votes in national, state and local elections. This means that the outcome of elections does not represent the will of the majority, which is the foundation of a democracy. Citizens who do not participate in this very important exercise of their freedom and performance of their obligation should be denied citizenship and the privilege of voting. American democracy derives from suspicious assumptions that man is innately good and can be trusted and that he cares about himself and the world. People should earn the privileges they enjoy and maintain them only through honorable public goals and behaviors. These earned privileges should not be permanent but subject to termination in case of misconduct, such as illegal drug use, abuse of oneself or others, criminal behavior and general contempt toward persons and society. Problems of the current democratic form of government in the U.S. can be handled only by reforming...
Plato and other ancient thinkers and American founding fathers were moral men who set before themselves models of public conduct and independent spirit, which should be imitated and should be the basis of laws and practices (Wiessner).
Plato's Examined Life According to Plato, while we ought to value living good lives, an examined life is the only life worth living. Plato expands upon Socrates' ideas of an examined life in many of his works. Such a life requires daily introspection and reflection on the life, especially on the nature of virtue. Socrates' goal is to install reason as the judge of one's drives. The lack of self-knowledge is,
Allegory of the Cave This was a philosophical allegory that Plato put forth to try explain the individual understanding of ideas and objects. He put forth a fictitious cave that has sun light projected to the inside through an opening that served as the entrance to the cave. Within the cave were prisoners who were chained such that they always faced the far end wall without being able to turn their
He will be a servant to other servants. Without humility, however, the "servant" will become vain and proud; his vision of truth will likely become distorted by hubris. He will be no good to himself or to others. He will fight with other warrior-kings but for power and influence rather than for truth, beauty and goodness. Humility, in a sense, will keep him honest and in the light (even
Plato's Allegory Of The Cave If he were simply presenting the idea that humanity is often blind to the fullness and vast resources of the world and what it offers, using the cave as a metaphor would have been enough for Plato to make his point. If the only point was that individuals -- because they are so wrapped up in their own shallow lives, petty distractions, and so loyal to
After all, Socrates tells Glaucon that if the prisoner who sees the sunlight were to venture back in the cave and break the news that the shadows on the wall were illusions, he would be killed. However, it is possible to enjoy the pleasures of the body without causing harm to the self or to others. The key is to acknowledge truth and wisdom. Morgareidge suggests that collectivism can help
Existentialism takes the human subject -- the holistic human, and the internal conditions as the basis and start of the conceptual way of explaining life. Taking idealism From Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, then building upon it, existentialist thinkers strip away the external and look at questions that surround human existence, and the conditions of that existence, rather than hypothesizing or dreaming of different forms of being. Thus, the inward
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