A Civilization in Twilight

Political "debate" in the United States has devolved to egging women and mugging Trump supporters. Free speech has become mob rule to shut down and intimidate anybody with whom you disagree. That's like not the United States, but then not much is these days. It has been seen before, though, in places like Germany in the early-1930s or Mao's "Great Leap Forward" movement. It did not work out well there and it will not work out well here either. The root cause is moral and spiritual, not political, as Plato wrote about a few thousand years ago.

In The Republic, Plato discusses with two fictitious students how a democracy goes bad:

"In short, the boys begin to realize that justice and happiness in a community rests upon the moral condition of its citizens. This is what Socrates meant when he said: "The state is man writ large."

Near the end of the Republic Socrates decides to drive this point home by showing Adeimantus what happens to a regime when its parents and educators neglect the proper moral education of its children. In the course of this chilling illustration Adeimantus comes to discover a dark and ominous secret: without proper moral conditioning a regime's "defining principle" will be the source of its ultimate destruction. For democracy, that defining principle is freedom. According to Socrates, freedom makes a democracy but freedom also eventually breaks a democracy.

For Socrates, democracy's "insatiable desire for freedom and neglect of other things" end up putting it "in need of a dictatorship." The short version of his theory is that the combination of freedom and poor education in a democracy render the citizens incapable of mastering their impulses and deferring gratification. The reckless pursuit of freedom leads the citizens to raze moral barriers, deny traditional authority, and abandon established methods of education. Eventually, this uninhibited quest for personal freedom forces the public to welcome the tyrant. Says Socrates: "Extreme freedom can't be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city."
Democracy is a fragile thing and we are well on our way to losing it. Much of this country has become amoral or even immoral as freedom has become license and it is reflected in our leaders, especially the prospective Presidential candidates. Unless freedom is securely linked to a strong sense of obligation and self-control, both of which are moral and spiritual virtues, and this linkage is passed from generation to generation, then slavery is our ultimate destination, not some Leftist or Rightist political Paradise on Earth. 

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/02/how_democracies_become_tyranni.html