This is an old Philosophy essay I wrote, taking my own tack on Plato's Republic. Tom, this one's for you, although I'm not sure how much you'll like it. Honestly, I'd reccomend the God one as a better read.

-J

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A Modern Republic

Sitting at a table outside of a Chevron gas station were two young men, discussing the American government and how it could be improved. A girl emerged from inside, book in hand, and the older of the pair called her over.

“Hey, Bree!” he called, “Maybe you can talk some sense into this guy. See, we’re talking about what could be done about the government, but I’m talking reform and J.R. wants a full-blown communist revolution.” She looked vaguely shocked at finding them there, but shyly came to their table and sat down.

“Well, he’s actually more right than you, Tom. You gotta start from scratch if you’re going to really improve anything. But I think history has pretty much proved that communism doesn’t turn out well, no matter how much Karl Marx you read.”

“Oh yeah?” J.R. interjected sarcastically, “Then how should it be done, your highness?”

“With something completely new!” she responded, excitingly waving her philosophy book. “I’ve been reading this Plato stuff for school, and it’s slow reading, but it’s really interesting.”

“You’re such a dork, Bree. Anyway, why follow someone else’s ideas from forever ago? The world has changed, people have thought of better stuff since then. History shows that people need revolution like forests need a fire every once in a while, it’s a natural cycle to overthrow the government. This system’s getting old, it’s behind the times.”

“You can’t justify killing people with trends, man.” Tom chided, “Violent revolution is murder And you could never pull it off; revolutions are a last resort, and America just isn’t that inspiringly oppressive.”

“And it shouldn’t take that much anyway.” Bree added, “If we clearly have a better system planned out, then people should want to be a part of it. Plus, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t want to deal with all of America. It’s just too big to really be handled cleanly. I mean, if we used just… say, this state, I think we’d do just fine. California has all the land and resources we would need, we already have plenty of farmland and established cities here.”

Tom spoke ponderingly, “Well if we’re scrapping the system we have now, what are we doing with our new country of California? Capitalism would have to stay.”

“But regulated, of course.” J.R. added.

“Yeah, yeah. We can’t have it going out of control. But besides that? I guess I can agree that democracy has its flaws, and while we’re talking hypothetically we can’t accept stuff like that. I mean, we can’t just let the most popular guys lead our country, most popular guys are finks. So what has the almighty Plato to say on the matter?”

Bree flipped her book open and held it sideways, trying to read her scribbled notes in the margins. “Well, I can’t say I entirely agree, but I think Plato talks about having a very controlled society, with ‘Guardians’ that they train from birth to be the perfect leaders. But the censorship is to cut out all the bad stuff that society produces.” She added hastily at Tom’s reaction, “I mean, freedom of speech and of the press is nice luxury to have, but you have to admit that it causes serious problems.”

“I agree on that one.”, said J.R. “Farmers don’t need to know about nuclear missiles in Korea in order to farm. It just freaks them out, causes a panic, and it’s got nothing to do with them in the first place. But publications and speech and such I’m not so sure about. After all, what can it hurt, right?”

“It can hurt a lot, you loser.”, Tom reluctantly contributed to the idea. “Just because something isn’t on the news doesn’t mean that it’s not going to get everywhere anyway. If someone publishes a book on nuclear weapons, don’t you think it’s just as detrimental? No, if you start something like that you have to go all the way. And while we’re at it, we would have to cut out other stuff, as well. All that desensitizing violence and stuff in the media that people always raise such a fuss about. If this ‘guardian training’ is what I think it is, then why not help raise all of our citizens to be good people? It is that, isn’t it? Chosen as children and raised to be unbearably good people and good leaders, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Bree answered, “But that’s not really such a huge deal, I think. I mean, raising leaders is important in a way, but the big picture is what we’re really talking about. The economy is agreed, but there’s more to it. What should we do about the justice system, education, immigration, other countries? Especially those last points, ‘cause that’s a big problem already.”

Tom answered, “Well, the way I see it, immigration is really tied to other countries, so we can tackle both at once. I assume that it will be the guardians filling in the gaping holes in our theory here and making it into a real system, so ignoring those, what we would need would be a very assertive foreign policy.”

“The United States would not like us breaking off one of their states.” J.R. interrupted, “They would have to be the first thing on our minds, violent revolution or no. And America is not a country to mess around with.”

“True,” Tom continued, “We would have to be pretty solid, economically and militarily, as well as unified in our desire to be our own country. Otherwise we’re just swallowed back up and put down in history books as another group of lunatics. And assuming that we do manage to get recognized, we would have to be pretty close-bordered. Hey!” he said, appearing to realize something, “Immigration could even be used as a stabilization tool. Say we have a shortage of a particular skill, we just open the valves for those kinds of people to come in. And they balance us out again. In that case we even choose who comes into our country, and new stock does nothing but improve our society.”

“Yeah, man, that’s great! But how do we deal with people already in the country, the criminals? It’s in U.S. law, I think, that breaking the law is viewed as an attack on the whole society. I vote that we keep that up, I mean, stability is crucial in a little country like this. But are we keeping the system we’re already under on that?”

“No,” Bree said, “I don’t like the system now, it’s not really effective. I’m thinking something like semi-deportation. Don’t give me that look, Tom, let me explain. We set up something like rehabilitation camps, I don’t know how, exactly, I’m not big on all that psychology stuff. But people are sent to institutions like that with various levels of intensity, and afterwards are given an evaluation. If there’s hope for them to be a productive citizen again, then it works like a parole system and they can earn their full citizenship back. And only the hopeless cases are removed to permanent incarceration.”

“And what makes that more effective than straight-up prison?” J.R. challenged.

“Well, it encourages reform rather than just negative reinforcement of behavior because ‘if you steal, we’re locking you up in a room with a psycho killer for six months’. I mean, people can come out of prison even more messed up and more inclined to break the law again simply because they’ve had contact with no one but hardcore criminals while they were supposed to be ‘learning their lesson’. Why traumatize our citizens who obviously already need help in being an upright person?” While speaking with her hands, the back of Bree’s wrist happened to cross in front of her eyes, and she hastily stood up.

“You know what guys, I was supposed to be home an hour ago, so I’m gonna leave y’all to continue your debate. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.” The girl walked off, and the boys turned to discussing the education system.