And it is clear that when a tyrant arises, the position of popular leader is the sole root from which he springs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there are impeachments, judgments, and trials on both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once he really takes over a docile mob, he does not restrain himself from shedding a fellow citizen\u2019s blood. But by leveling the usual false charges and bringing people into court, he commits murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in addition, I suppose, so that if there are some freethinking people he suspects of rejecting his rule, he can find pretexts for putting them at the mercy of the enemy and destroying them? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For all these reasons, isn\u2019t a tyrant compelled to be always stirring up war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And don\u2019t some of those who helped establish his tyranny and hold positions of power within it, the ones who are bravest, speak freely to him and to each other, criticizing what is happening? Then the tyrant will have to do away with all of them if he intends to rule, until he is left with no friend or enemy who is worth anything at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If there are sacred treasuries in the city, he will obviously use them for as long as they last, as well as the property of those he has destroyed, so the taxes he will require from the people will be smaller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plato, Republic VIII<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And it is clear that when a tyrant arises, the position of popular leader is the sole root from which he springs. Then there are impeachments, judgments, and trials on both sides. Once he really takes over a docile mob, he does not restrain himself from shedding a fellow citizen\u2019s blood. But by leveling the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,30],"tags":[45,54,33,53],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","category-politics","tag-plato","tag-republic","tag-trump","tag-tyrant"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/President-Donald-Trump-Official-Presidential-Portrait.png-scaled.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bobyanal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}