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1) Looks like Charlie Kirk is speaking to my area of expertise, citing Plato's influence on Rousseau. I happen to have written a book on this very subject, Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment (Penn State Press, 2007). https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1272733117120278528
2) There are a few errors and oversights in what Kirk says here that are worth highlighting. And I embark on this with some trepidation, as I was only recently released from TPUSA's "Professor Watchlist" for reasons unknown to me.
3) On to the texts. Plato's Socrates in the Republic is indeed critical of property -- but not of property generally. He wants to prohibit property specifically to the ruling class, . . .
4) . . . since he is concerned that rulers might be tempted to rule in a fashion that favors enhancing their own property holdings. Although the US doesn't bar presidents from holding property, . . .
5) . . . it has been standard to ask them to place their investments in blind trusts for similar reasons that concerned Plato in the Republic. (Obviously, Trump has flagrantly violated this norm.) https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/12/us-ethics-chief-slams-trump-halfway-blind-trust-as-failing-to-meet-acceptable-standard.html
6) While Rousseau was indeed profoundly influenced by Plato, he does not follow, as a general rule, Kirk's reading of Plato.
7) Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, allows that the invention of property has led to many evils. This is almost axiomatic, inasmuch as conflict & crime in civil society commonly involve property.
8) This being said, Rousseau insists in his Discourse on Political Economy, “property is the most sacred of all the rights of citizens” and is, in fact, “the true foundation of civil society.”
9) The real problem, for both Plato and Rousseau, is when some people have too much property, and others have not enough.
10) For Plato inequality creates not one republic, but “two [cities] . . . which are at war with one another: the city of the poor and that of the rich” (Republic, 422e-423a).
11) For Rousseau, regarding equality, "this word must not be understood to mean that degrees of power and wealth should be absolutely the same, but that, as for power, it stop short of all violence and never be exercised except by virtue of rank and the laws, . . .
12) . . . and that as for wealth, no citizen be so very rich that he can buy another, and none so poor that he is compelled to sell himself:"
13) Which assumes, on the part of the great, moderation in goods and influence, on the part of the lowly, moderation in avarice and covetousness" (SC, 2.11).
14) In brief, Rousseau is concerned about inequality because it fosters a system of where rich people control the freedoms of the poor.
15) But here's the kicker. Charlie Kirk says the real hero, from his conservative viewpoint, is Aristotle, who is a defender of private property. We have already noted that both Plato and Rousseau also accept property.
16) But what Kirk doesn't apparently know, despite being "well read, the Republic and so forth" (see video), is that Aristotle was equally concerned about economic inequality.
16) For Aristotle notes, in his Politics, “The greatest injustices . . . are committed because of excess and not because of necessities” (1267a13).
17) Aristotle is concerned about both democracy and oligarchy because of the tendency of both the poor and the rich to dominate the other whenever it has the upper-hand, political speaking (see Politics, 3.10).
18) This is the foundation of Aristotle's argument for what @GaneshSitaraman calls the "middle class constitution," an argument he finds undergirding our own American Constitution, since economic equality becomes one of the founding principles of republicanism.
19) Oh, and one more thing about Rousseau. Did he influence Marx? Sure, though Marx's conclusion were more radical than Rousseau's.
20) But do you know who else he influenced? Adam Smith. Yes, the godfather of capitalism. Profoundly influenced by Rousseau, Smith cautions that the wealthy are consumed by their own “natural selfishness and rapacity” (TMS, 3.4.1
21) As Smith writes in his Lectures on Jurisprudence, "In a rich country the disproportion betwixt them will be prodigious in all these respects. This dis<pro>portion will make the rich men much more severe to their slaves than the poorer ones. . . .
22) A man of great fortune, a nobleman, is much farther removed from the condition of his servant than a farmer. . . . The disproportion betwixt them, the condition of the nobleman and his servant, is so great that he will hardly look at him as being of the same kind;
23) he thinks he has little title even to the ordinary enjoyments of life, and feel but little for his misfortunes." In other words, great inequality of wealth and status deprive those at the extremes from feeling real human emotions for those at the opposite extreme.
24) And to the extent that the poor admire the rich, this is “the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments” (TMS, 1.2.3).
25) Finally, what was Plato's influence over Rousseau that I written about in some depth? It was their shared concern about moral relativism -- something that concerns many self-identified conservatives.
26) Plato created his "theory of the Forms," I argue, in order to combat that relativism Athenians used to justify gross imperialism during the Peloponnesian War, not to mention the excesses that took place during the Athenian plague.
27) Rousseau is attracted to Plato's moral principles for similar reasons, arguing that "What is good and conforms to order is so by the nature of things, independent of human conventions. . . . Undoubtedly there is a universal justice that emanates from reason alone" (SC, 2.6)
28) There was a time when many prominent conservatives really cared about such things. But this is more murky these days. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/21/evangelicals-continue-to-apply-moral-relativism-in-dealing-with-trump-but-at-what-cost/
29) I have written elsewhere that maybe it's time to think more seriously about these matters. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/28/founders-worried-that-republic-would-fail-without-virtue-today-we-dont/
