Tyranny from Plato to Trump: Fools, Sycophants, and Citizens

Power grabs, partisan stand-offs, propaganda, and riots make for tantalizing fiction, but what do we do when that drama becomes a reality all around us? For a country founded as an escape from British tyranny, the United States seems to have devolved into a land where tyrants rise to power, sycophants blindly follow, and the entire nation suffers.

As ancient Greek philosophers warned us, chaotic tragedy unfolds in the absence of reason, and the only cure is a return to wisdom and virtue. Ame...