Ancient Athens was a form of direct democracy probably because of its size. The BBC in a program about direct Democracies make the claim that the USA may be an example of this form of rule and that a tyrant was certain to emerge from a state of affairs in which children no longer respect their parents and students are afraid of their teachers. The idea of a representative form of constitutional government came from Aristotle and it is designed specifically to prevent tyrants from usurping power and ruling.

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Delphic Podcast

Tyranny for Plato and Aristotle was a pathological form of monarchy in which one tyrant with unnecessary and unlawful desires leads a whole community to ruin and destruction. Totalitarianism Arendt argues is a different phenomenon because it is tolerated by the masses who have lost trust in the political system. Hitler and Stalin used the laws of the state to undermine our historically established sense of justice. Fanatical interpretations of Laws of Nature and History are invoked for justifications for mass murder. The inner conversation for Arendt is disturbed and the public political space is corrupted

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Delphic Podcast

Kant argues that there is a fundamental human right to roam the world and this fact requires from everyone the response of hospitality: a response based on the categorical imperative which demands that every human treats every other human as an end-in-themselves. The original Great Trek From Africa might have been an act of necessity or an act of exploration but whatever was the case it required bravery and resourcefulness. The Chinese in response to the challenge as to why in the past they have not resisted migrations simply argue that after three generations these migrants will be Chinese so, they ask, wisely, what exactly is the point given experience has shown that these migrants contribute to the welfare of the common good.

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Delphic Podcast

There is a logical relation Plato and Aristotle argued between personal identity and political identity which, if true, would legitimise the use of psychoanalytical theory in any political diagnosis. Freud must have recognised Germany as a Pathological nation state given its open anti-semiticism and he would clearly have recognised the USA of today to also fall into this category. For Freud technical terms such as narcissism, paranoia etc were not accompanied with the negative emotion that is characteristic of their use today. They were clinical, descriptive/explanatory terms with clinical criteria.

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Delphic Podcast

Kissinger believes in a strong America well into the 21st century and emerging powers of equal rank which include Europe. Europe was an attempt to integrate a number of different West European Nations and the Soviet Union attempted to unify a number of different Easter nationalities. Kissinger does not see any value in a world order created by the values of the United Nations, an idea from the 18th century Political Philosophy of Kant. Nor does he view Globalisation in the same moral and legal terms as Kant,

http://michaelrdjames.org

Delphic Podcast

Aristotle's Politics is still the North Star of modern Politics because of its understanding of the nature of man and his flaws. Shakespeare inherited this understanding as well as Aristotelian pluralism which insisted that either one man or a group of men could rule wisely as long as the principles of justice were followed in lawmaking and law-administration processes.

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Delphic Podcast

The military form of Globalisation began by Alexander had its causes and consequences related to the Golden Mean Principle which had not as yet manifested itself in the form of the nation-state. It was Empires such as the Roman Empire that colonised other parts of the world that eventually led to the rise of nation states and their sovereignty. The Philosophy of the Ancient Greeks contained the principles necessary to understand the Changes that were occurring in the world which included the marginalisation of the very form of thought we needed to comprehend what was happening.

http://michaelrdjames.org

Delphic Podcast

Humanistic liberalism as conceived by Paul Ricoeur has Kantian elements in spite of Ricoeurs preference for a more interpretative view of the ethical good. Ricoeur claims that criminal law is instrumentally constituted for the purpose of vengeance but a true humanistic liberal would claim that the punishment combines both retributive and educational components. Trumps executive order to stop travel to the US from 7 Muslim countries is according to humanistic liberalism constitutionally illegal.

http://michaelrdjames.org

Delphic Podcast