Republic and Democracy

The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1511
The original image is quite large and shows a great deal of detail. Click it to embiggen it.

Sometimes it pays to review the basic principles of a subject. I think this is a good description.

"Thus, the idea of a Republic, which considered from this perspective is the required universal acknowledgement of a common wealth of morals, traditions, and aspirations (which often boils down to religion), plus some of the following: territory, language, stories, heroes – culture. This commonwealth, shared and enforced by all, shapes the laws and reigns in the sociopaths leaders who inevitably arise. Within a Republic, you can have democracy – a democracy in which all the truly important stuff is off the table, and the voter and candidates and issues all fall within the bounds, in both senses of the word, of the Commonwealth." - Joseph Moore

A couple other items I gleaned from Joseph's essay:

• a Stagirite is a native or resident of Stagira, Greece, which is just a few miles down the coast from the ancient ship railroad. Aristotle was a Stagirite. The railroad was in operation during Aristotle's lifetime.
• The movie The Last Temptation of Christ was adapted from a book of the same name written by Nikos Kazantzakis, who is a pretty famous writer. I say 'pretty famous' because I had never heard of him, but he also wrote Zorba the Greek. I saw the movie version of Zorba a zillion years ago and it was pretty great. The stoning of the woman was a shock to my system. I had heard of such a thing, but that isn't really the same as seeing it. God forbid I ever encounter that in real life. The collapse of the log transport system was also a shock. The failure of a well constructed system was something my very young self had never before considered. I might have to read one of Nikos' books.