The Laws: Plato’s Sacred Ethnostate, Part 3: The Sanctity of the Family and Procreation

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An ancient Greek family.

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Filial Piety: The Foundation of Social Order

The remainder of this article will show the central role of a kinship, both familial and ethnic, in Plato’s Magnesian regime. Plato cites Homer’s Cyclopes as a metaphor for the family being prehistoric humanity’s first society. In this family, the patriarch rightly rules on grounds of kinship:

The eldest member rules by virtue of having inherited power from his father or mother; the others follow his lead and make one flock like birds. The authority to which they bow is that of their patriarch: they are governed, in effect, by the most justifiable of all forms of kingship. (680e)[1]

Plato goes into lengthy detail on the honor children owe their parents as a sacred imperative, on “the worship of the gods and the services to be rendered to our ancestors” (723e). We frequently find such statements pairing blood and spirit: the highest moral imperatives are those to our kin and to the divine.

It is meet and right that a debtor should discharge his first and greatest obligation and pay the debt which comes before all others; he must consider that all he has and holds belongs to those who bore and bred him, and he is meant to use it in their service to the limit of his powers . . . [to] give to the old people what they desperately need in view of their age: repayment of all that anxious care and attention they lavished on him, the longstanding “loan” they made him as a child. Throughout his life the son must be very careful to watch his tongue in addressing his parents, because there is a very heavy penalty for careless and ill-considered language; Retribution, messenger of Justice, is the appointed overseer of these things. If his parents get angry, he must submit to them, and whether they satisfy their anger in speech or action, he must forgive them; after all, he must reflect, it’s natural enough for a father to get very angry if he thinks he’s being harmed by his own son. (717b–d)

Anyone whose parents live at home with them should venerate and care for them as “living shrines” (931e); care for them is more valuable than prayer to gods, because they might join our own prayers. Read more

The Laws: Plato’s Sacred Ethnostate, Part 2: Social Cohesion and Just Inegalitarianism

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Artist’s impression of Spartan wrestling.

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A Holistic Rule of Law Aiming at Inculcating Virtue and Social Cohesion

Plato’s main innovation in the Laws is to have pioneered the notion of the “rule of law.” He constrains the Magnesian regime in a complex system of laws and courts of appeal, guaranteed by the so-called Guardians of the Laws, by which all officials were liable for prosecution for misdeeds. In the Laws Plato asserts boldly: “any state without duly established courts simply ceases to be a state” (766d). Plato the “totalitarian” is also the forerunner of the very notion of the rule of law and checks and balances, which would prove so influential for Montesquieu and the American Founding Fathers.

Another innovation: the laws are to have preambles, meant to persuade the citizens by rational argument of the necessity of a given action, with coercion to be used only if that fails. Thus the laws use two methods: “compulsion and persuasion (subject to the limitations imposed by the uneducated masses)” (722b). The law, devised by reason, is to be a “golden and holy” cord, pulling upon the souls of the citizens, towards virtue. Plato advocates a reformative penology aiming to improve criminals rather than harm them (854a). He expects citizens to “exact the vengeance of his fatherland” against those who would subvert the laws (856b).

While aware of the disadvantages of an inflexible and overly general law, Plato hopes nonetheless to escape the rule of men and establish the rule of reason embodied in law. The Greek word nomos means both “custom” and “law,” and indeed Plato’s notion of law sometimes explicitly extends to a society’s culture and traditions as a whole. He observes, as many have since, that the constitution and laws ultimately depend on “unwritten customs” and “ancestral law,” which “are the bonds of the entire social framework, linking all written and established laws with those yet to be passed. They act in the same way as ancestral customs from time immemorial, by virtue of being soundly established and instinctively observed, shielding and protecting existing written law” (793b–c). For Plato, politics and lawmaking are not merely matters of administration or management, but of education and customs. This is to say that, for Plato, respecting traditional culture is at the center of the statesman’s work.

Plato’s high ambition is again evident: his Laws do not aim to create a perfect legal text, but rather to imagine a society whose traditions, customs, basic law, and regime are all working to make the citizens tend towards virtue. This notion of law and custom obviously rejects the modern notion of a “private sphere” supposedly outside the domain of politics. Plato points out that “the state’s general code of laws will never rest on a firm foundation as long as private life is badly regulated, and it’s silly to expect otherwise” (790b). In this, Plato is not being uniquely authoritarian, but shares a view in common with Aristotle and Greek legislators in general. Read more

The Laws: Plato’s Sacred Ethnostate, Part 1

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A version of this article will appear as a chapter in an upcoming book on ethnopolitical thought in ancient Greece. Constructive criticisms and comments are therefore most welcome.

Plato’s Republic is one of the most famous books in existence. So long as it has had readers, people have wondered whether the ideal state presented in that work, Callipolis, was meant as a serious political proposal. Or was it only meant as an intellectually-stimulating utopia, or even merely a symbolic analogy for the perfect soul? Personally I am surprised by the confusion; more important in the Republic, or any of Plato’s dialogues, than the specific provisions are the principles underpinning them. From this, we can be quite assured, for instance, that Plato was a fundamentally aristocratic thinker, seeing the recognition of inequality as the foundation of ethics, deeply concerned about ensuring a just hierarchy, good culture, and good breeding.

Furthermore, besides Republic, we have Plato’s longest yet less famous final work, also on politics: the Laws, which describes his “second-best city,” called Magnesia. Here we find our same Plato —the same uncompromising defense of altruism, the same paradoxical “totalitarianism” in service of the community, the same fear and loathing of egalitarianism and “pop culture,” the same meritocratic proto-feminism, the same quest for perfection. Most of what modern liberals find objectionable in the Republic can be found repeated, evidently meant seriously, in the Laws.

Actually, I believe the Laws merely explicitly spells out the implications in a particular concrete example of what one could reasonably infer from the Republic. At the eve of life, Plato apparently wished to cross all his T’s and dot all his I’s. Indeed the work sometimes goes into rather tedious detail, perhaps inevitable for a legal treatise. Furthermore, I would stress again that much of Plato’s authoritarianism was in fact not unique to him, but simply reflected the community-centered ethics and practice of citizenship of the ancient Greek polis. Glenn Morrow, the definitive interpreter of the Laws, writes that it has been “declared, with some exaggeration but with essential insight, that Plato’s Laws is a collection and codification of the whole of Greek law.”[1] This would explain why there is so much overlap between Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s similarly-encyclopedic Politics (though the latter, as lecture notes, are far easier for a modern to read). It also suggests that the Laws must be read not as a philosopher’s pie-in-the-sky dreaming, but as synthesis of centuries of practical Greek political experience.

In the Republic, Plato is arguably radicalizing Socratic insights on self-discipline, the rule of expertise, and good breeding, and projecting them to the level of a polity. Similarly, in the Laws, Plato is systematizing and occasionally radicalizing many of the underlying assumptions of the practice of ancient Greek politics.[2] Whereas the Republic’s radically utopian aristocratic and eugenic principles can be summarized briefly, in the Laws Plato goes into considerable detail on specific measures to be taken.

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On the SPLC and Their Lies: The Harassment of Andrew Anglin

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“The Jew cries out in pain as he strikes you.”
Polish Proverb

In what is sure to be the biggest legal assault on free speech this year, news has emerged that the Southern Poverty Law Center is orchestrating a lawsuit against leading Alt-Right media figure Andrew Anglin. The text of the suit alleges that Anglin orchestrated a harassment campaign against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish realtor residing in Whitefish, Montana, that involved “invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violation of Montana’s Anti-Intimidation Act.”

That the SPLC, of all organizations, should be pressing forward on such grounds is ironic to say the very least. Aside from scare-mongering among old, wealthy Jews in order to solicit donations and bequests, the SPLC’s entire modus operandi has for some time revolved around ‘exposés’ of Nationalist figures. Although these doxxings are dressed up as “Intelligence Reports” forming part of an overall “Hatewatch” strategy, in reality they are little more than grubby, sensationalized, and often libellous attempts at political intimidation. Indeed, the efforts of the SPLC in this regard are rooted in a desire to invade privacy and inflict emotional distress — precisely the kind of actions they are presently accusing Andrew Anglin of encouraging. Read more

Auburn is already a success: We must have a public presence by any means necessary

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Update: Due to the efforts of Atty. Sam Dickson (whose writing for TOO is referenced below), Auburn was forced to hold the event. A video of the event is posted in the TOO video corner.

It’s really great that the Alt Right, led by Richard Spencer, will be holding an event at Auburn today, even after getting canceled by the university. Having a public presence is absolutely critical to any political movement that intends to become mainstream. There is a fairly long history of the left shutting down public events by intimidating hotels, as happened several times with American Renaissance and recently with a proposed VDARE.com conference in Yosemite. And recently we have had the antifa rioting in Berkeley, shutting down the Milo talk, and antifa violence against Trump supporters in several places, most notably at the Trump inauguration and last weekend in Berkeley.

Too often antifa violence and intimidation have been successful. The forces of intolerance, intellectual conformity and hostility to Whites and their interests have succeeded. A sure sign that the left is in an impenetrable bubble is that we read about “Alt Right thugs” on blogs and Twitter feeds. No violence would have happened apart from antifa attacks. The antifa is all about shutting down free speech, Trump supporters, and the Alt Right “by any means necessary.”


And the fact is that, until last weekend in Berkeley, the antifa had been winning consistently. Police typically stood by and did nothing even as antifa were assaulting their victims and burning down stores. When arrests were made, little or nothing has come of it (see Sam Dickson’s “The assault on Richard Spencer: No punishment for crimes against White activists“). They are, indeed, pillars of the establishment. Or perhaps Storm Troopers of the establishment would be a better label. Read more

Vibrant Verse: British Poetry as Occupied Territory

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The British Isles have given more than their share to science, literature and philosophy. But in other ways they have done less well, as the great Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) noted in one of his short stories. This is a German woman talking to the English spy Ashenden:

“You English, you cannot paint, you cannot model, you cannot write music.”
“Some of us can at times write pleasing verses,” said Ashenden,
[and], he did not know why, two lines occurring to him he said them: “Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Caypor, with a strange gesture, “you can write
poetry. I wonder why.”
And to Ashenden’s surprise she went on, in her guttural English, to recite the next two lines of the poem he had quoted. (“The Traitor,” 1928)

Mrs Caypor was right. The British Isles have never produced a composer to compare with Beethoven or an artist to compare with Michelangelo. They haven’t even come close. But Milton compares with Dante and other great poets have graced these islands, from Burns and Yeats in Scotland and Ireland to Wordsworth and Thomas in England and Wales, from the home-grown Chaucer to the adopted T.S. Eliot. Britain has a golden poetic tradition. You can say that without hyperbole or irony. Read more