For those who don't know, Cohen self-describes as "public enemy #3" in Israel. I recall him as a "Hester St" radical lawyer of the Emma Goldman faction of the Lower East Side of NYC. As I disclosed in my previous post--the whole situation has never been comfortable.
Today, Cohen is under federal indictment for some weird tax-evasion, well, thing that is hard to describe (as happened to Cindy Sheehan of Code Pink). Apparently broke (despite having Hezbollah and Hamas as clients), he has a paypal button on his professional page. The first hurdle for him, in my opinion is to get his philosophy straight for reasons I attempt to gel.
Straight up from his home page:
Like Socrates, who was tried for telling the truth about the state of Athenian democracy, your attempts to improve our national sense of justice are clearly the source of your persecution. This is a stain upon the republic and an affront to basic human dignity.
(Typos, so far, will be his. FYI, trucking has sent my eyesight to the horizon so I am not myopic like you, and glasses give me a headache.)
The common source for Socrates is, of course, IF Stone's Trial of. Being the trial was so long ago, and so many libraries have burned since then, I think it is fair to accept Stone in whole to create a common playing field (like the Olympics do).
Just as Christ (the Rabbi rather than the metacognition) attempted to outlaw slavery--which remains Athen's Achilles heel--Stone suggests that some Athenians were going in the direction of anti-slavery, and I would like to give these Athenians the benefit of the doubt as I don't believe that the majority of humans are capable of abusing slaves. (This belief comes from Darwin's "natural affection" as the root of human morality.)
According to Stone, Socrates chose to poison himself (with non-poisonous sap) rather than leave town (as Aristotle later did after his "death sentence") because he was found guilty of not doing his duty to democracy by not attending the Forums (according to Stone). Presently, we have no Forum in any important place, and Occupy, for instance, failed to restore open forums when it had a chance and instead opted to continue its Soviet-style general assemblies.
Of course, Christians kept slaves until the American Civil War, and "the sufferers" did not get "full citizenship" (or rights) until 100 yrs later--but we now enjoy a Black president. So, the intent may have been there, and I choose to give Athens the benefit of the doubt.
Athens may have, also, been guilty of oligarchy in other ways. While Rome was the first "diffuse tribute-collection system" (according to Lewis Mumford), it collected money ostensibly for its navy to protect the rest of Greece and spent the money on the huge forums, which greatly pissed-off the oligarchic Spartans and added to Athen's isolation.
But still, Athenians represented early attempts at civilized democracy, and it is clear to everyone that the alternative, Plato's et al. oligarchy that actually named the Roman Church's Inquisition. In this black & white world of us and them, I side with ancient Athens, and I don't think Stone would hate me for doing so.
So my question to you is this.
Should Cohen
a) continue to align himself with Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, or
b) should he wipe the Hegelian metacognition clean thus allowing himself to plug into the real world?