On 04-05-98 David Martorana wrote to Frank Masingill... 
 DM>  FM> We still face, daily, the problem posed by Plato in his CONSCIOUS 
 DM>  FM> myth of the judgement - what do you do with the "souls" that are 
 DM>  FM> NOT curable. 
 DM>   
 DM>      Tolerate them if you can ...terminate them if you can't...! 
 DM>      That would be my simple of it.............................!
Lovely! Terminate the intolerable? 
 
 DM> ... To start with, did he actually 
 DM>   consider the oracle at Delphi a legitimate/true source of 
 DM> information? 
I dunno; for sure, the Oracle deserves a lotta respect.  So far as 
I can tell, she was never wrong.  You always got the right answer, 
but you did not know the right question until much later.  There's 
only one reply of hers that I know of which Plato quotes- namely a 
statement that Socrates was the wisest of all men.  I dunno if she 
referred to only living men, or not.  If not, there's little doubt 
that she was, indeed, correct.  Even if you include all men of all
time, you still got a pretty good case. 
 
 DM>   AND did he really believe that the "political lie" was a valid tool 
 DM> in
 DM>   politics? Realizing that people are mind-fixed in their own time and 
 DM>   also change their views over a lifetime, I may have read beyond good 
 DM>   background perspective and reasoning. 
I didn't know he said that.  Nevertheless, he saw the disaster of 
demogoguery that arose out of democracy.  In his republic, he has 
the government run by experts who may dissemble rather than teach 
the unteachable the true facts of policy.  And, given a gullible, 
lazy, stupid, and ignorant electorate, is there any other way for 
prudent leaders to run things? 
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