Democracy through Plato's Apology of Socrates
America is the oldest democracy in the world. Withstanding a civil war, two world wars, and the not-so-distant cold war, America has proved that a democracy made "of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth" (Jefferson). However, this democratic society is not a society where those who reside here simply reap the benefits; there are many moral obligations of living in a democratic society. Just as our ancestors fought to create this land, we must fight for America, not with weapons, but by practicing justice, and more importantly, exercising the freedom we have to direct the government, through acts of protest, toward what we, as citizens, feel is right for this country. Plato's three pieces in the book, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, focused on the accusation, trial, and death of Socrates. Euthyphro focused on Euthyphro accusing his father of murder for killing a slave with enforces that justice needs to be for everyone, by everyone. The Apology focused on the trial and how Socrates tried to convince everyone he didn't not manipulate the youth. Lastly, in Crito, Socrates refuses to escape prison because he has been sentenced to death.
Voting is a moral obligation that many people tend to take for granite and skip altogether. In Euthyphro, Euthyphro put his own father on trail for murder. Unfortunately, some of those men make it to government positions where they have an effect on the masses. In Letters from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. Was also put on trail by the state because they were afraid of him. There are a few men who dodged the draft. Bellah and his colleges saw this attitude reflected in many people and wrote " we are concerned that this individualism may have grown cancerous . I to die, and you to live" (Plato 49). Socrates left letting everyone know that even though he had been put on a fair trial, he did not believe it to be fair, yet he would face the consequences any way. Instead they all spoke of how our system provides them freedom from being disrupted by others. "An individual who breaks a law that his concise tells him is unjust, and willing accepts the penalty of staying in jail to arose the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law" (King 90). Very few of the hundreds of people he interviewed were at all interested in being active in the government or in improving their lives through political means.
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