Went out looking for books on Chinese political history, and instead came back with; Aristotle's The Politics, Plato's The Republic and a book on the essential writings of the American Transcendentalists of the early and mid-19thC. Apparently the latter were influences on Deniehy, Harpur and other 19thC Australian Republicans.

I mainly want to go through Plato and Aristotle as Lintott discussed them both, and Polybius' work, as arguing that the sign of a good constitution is martial success.

It is ironic, as I started philosophy in Sydney, years and years ago, and the first text was The Republic, which bored me to tears. As it was I couldn't continue University because of work demands and dropped it.

Now, I am reading it for fun.

But back then I was interested in the philosophy of science and saw political philosophy as a distraction, today, I am more interested in politics.

I still don't believe the texts from antiquity offer much insight into modern political technology or practice. The main reason being liberalism and its expression through the enlightenment.

Compare Plato and Polybius and their martial constitutional view to Kant's document on international liberalism: where he argues that a perfect constitution is not possible under a state of war.

Antiquity's technologies were made obsolete with the enlightenment which is why they cannot be viewed under our rationality of liberal democratism or liberal republicanism. The difference between the Roman Republic and the American Republic is the enlightenment.

It is interesting to note that the 19thC Australian Republican view; that the republic should represent the absolute best of political technology at any one time, has been consistent through history. So even Plato's rationality of a republic, though infantile in comparison to what has been achieved constitutionally today, represented the best political technology at the time.

Anyway, I will be spending this evening out on the back deck with a beer, a cigar, a pen and three books. Pretty close to my idea of bliss.

Plato argues that a state which goes beyond need, into want, must necessarily organise itself constitutionally for warfare. This may be where the Jeffersonian appeal to a nation of yeomanry comes from. It is one of meeting needs, rather than the capital investment into luxury which Alexander Hamilton's central bank enabled. Then again, Jefferson was a shameless debtor, who, while in France, spent heavily on powdered wigs and other forms of European adornments and vanities.

From Plato's Republic:

Yes, I said, now I understand: the question which you would have me consider is, not only how a State, but how a luxurious State is created; and possibly there is no harm in this, for in such a State we shall be more likely to see how justice and injustice originate. In my opinion the true and healthy constitution of the State is the one which I have described. But if you wish also to see a State at fever heat, I have no objection. For I suspect that many will not be satisfied with the simpler way of way They will be for adding sofas, and tables, and other furniture; also dainties, and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and cakes, all these not of one sort only, but in every variety; we must go beyond the necessaries of which I was at first speaking, such as houses, and clothes, and shoes: the arts of the painter and the embroiderer will have to be set in motion, and gold and ivory and all sorts of materials must be procured.

True, he said.

Then we must enlarge our borders; for the original healthy State is no longer sufficient. Now will the city have to fill and swell with a multitude of callings which are not required by any natural want; such as the whole tribe of hunters and actors, of whom one large class have to do with forms and colours; another will be the votaries of music --poets and their attendant train of rhapsodists, players, dancers, contractors; also makers of divers kinds of articles, including women's dresses. And we shall want more servants. Will not tutors be also in request, and nurses wet and dry, tirewomen and barbers, as well as confectioners and cooks; and swineherds, too, who were not needed and therefore had no place in the former edition of our State, but are needed now? They must not be forgotten: and there will be animals of many other kinds, if people eat them.

He continues to describe the a state which requires luxury, and who border's states who require luxury must inevitably deal with war:

And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants will be too small now, and not enough?

Quite true.

Then a slice of our neighbours' land will be wanted by us for pasture and tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves, they exceed the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of wealth?

That, Socrates, will be inevitable.

And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not?

Most certainly, he replied.

Then without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, thus much we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from causes which are also the causes of almost all the evils in States, private as well as public.

Undoubtedly.

And our State must once more enlarge; and this time the will be nothing short of a whole army, which will have to go out and fight with the invaders for all that we have, as well as for the things and persons whom we were describing above.

Because war is an art according to Plato, then the state must organise to promote the skill of war and soldiery in order to protect itself from other states seeking expansion, as well as expand itself to meet its own demands of luxury.

Which is all a bit simplistic and more a moral tale than one that can inform political structures. Given the imbalance of politics even today, not to mention in antiquity, yes avarice and vice contribute to war, but not from the common men and women who make the state. More likely it is the greed and glory of the tyrant, the king, the aristocracy and oligarchs.

Even the democratic structures in antiquity were very top heavy. For instance one of the three assemblies in Rome, who could declare war from a Senate consultum, was a military assembly made up of Roman citizens who were close enough to Rome to form on the fields of Mars. It is also believed that the military assembly was formed as a body in Regal Rome for tax purposes.

I don't doubt however that Plato's reading of luxury appealed to Thomas Jefferson's moral pique of the modern American Cato; which, incidentally, was totally at odds with how he lived personally.