>Debased then to admire the beneficiaries of the slave-owning democracy
>of Athens, Socrates, Aristotle and Plato, too, I guess.
Socrates & Co. are admirable aside from their personal practices. Ezra Pound was a stinking fascist but he wrote beautiful poetry. The U.S. "Founding Fathers" created a system designed to limit popular sovereignty and insulate a propertied ruling class against the depredations of the mob - or, as Madison listed the dangers in Federalist No. 10 <http://www.mcs.net/~knautzr/fed/fed10.htm>: "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project."
Doug