Ah shit: time to get into it. ... https://twitter.com/stevenmklein/status/1338839818059517952

Plato was building on Athenian democratic self-mythologizing when he made the tyrant the ultimate villain. Prior to the cult of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, a tyrant was not an especially odious figure. ...

Plato built on the myth to portray the tyrant as consumed by private desires, driven by lusts, at war with himself and his higher capacities, a slave to his worst impulses, constantly afraid of the public and the virtuous. ...

But the reception of Plato exaggerates the extent to which the difference between tyrant and philosopher king is about the constitution of the soul.

The super controversial things in the Republic — the noble lie, the lack of family and property, etc — are checks on power. ...

Plato thought the powerful would only be guard dogs instead of wolves if they lived their lives under the eye of the public and were indoctrinated from a young age with public spirited ideology. ...

And there is a lesson in there about the parent discourse! The *privacy* of the family is dangerous for kids. If parents aspire to be Platonic rulers rather than tyrants, we should tear down some of the walls around the privacy of the family space.