Following up (long after the fact) on a post at RogueClassicism--DM pointed out an column by Ahmad Faruqui in the (Pakistan) Daily Times comparing Gen. Musharraf to Coriolanus--I wanted to mention also the response a few days later by Ejaz Haider, who consistently refers to the Pakistani president as "Great Leader"; hence no surprise that he tries to mitigate the comparison. He brings up for comparison the case of Socrates:
...Socrates could not be tried during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. Athens had had enough of anti-democratic revolts and when Socrates would not stop Socratifying the youth, democratic Athens decided to put an end to his freethinking. The anti-democratic Socrates, basing his claim on freedom of speech to decry democracy, was thus wasted by democratic Athens because his freedom to think and speak endangered democracy.
In a broad sense, I find no contradiction in Athens — a democracy — acting against freethinking at a time when it was recovering from its experience with tyranny because no value is absolute and any one value needs to be juxtaposed with others to complete the picture. An absolute value by its very nature denies the possibility of an external reference. It is total in its own makeup and, thus, its own reference. Those who believe in religion — even those who try to rationalise religion — cannot go beyond a certain point because of the absolute nature of the enterprise. Do we need absolute democracy, or would we rather have Socratic freethinking aimed at putting down democracy even as most of us agree that freethinking is a democratic trait. The MMA comes to mind, and I, for one, would rather live under a benign, progressive despotism than savour the democracy in the NWFP.
That ain't the Massachusetts Motorcycle Association, methinks, but the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal--and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan...In any case, Haider ends up noting his preference for another barrage of classical references: an article by Mian Ijaz Ul Hassan, called "Diana and Her Hounds," which uses the stories of Leda and Actaeon (as well as Raskolnikov) to meditate on the subject of...rape.
The lesson of the Leda story for this writer:
The Greeks used the myths of rape not to flaunt the actions of their gods but to draw attention to the irrational and cruel world. A world where innocence was smothered by brute force, courage defeated by craft and love betrayed. The Greeks are today remembered not for rationalising crime and evil but for upholding virtue.
And as for the tale of Actaeon:
Let us hope that justice will be done [in the case at issue] and thus we, too, may be exonerated of the part of shame that is ours. If not, I can only pray that Diana (the unmarried goddess of the Greeks, who exercised special care for girls) intervenes, letting loose her own hounds on those who fail in performance of justice.
Hmm...well, I'm voting for the Coriolanus article, myself...
A democracy, especially the "purer" it is... as in; we all sit around a fire and vote... and all it takes to make ANY decision is 50% + 1...
No thanks, I'll take a FREE Republic... where democracy is a tool, not the rule... of free men...
Simply put... democracy can easily be the worst form of tyranny in existance... if for no other reason than it being the hardest to throw off...
OCTJMO, ICBW...
db
Posted by: db | April 01, 2005 at 02:51 PM