Towards the end of my time at school I read, in translation, Plato's Republic. This made an immense impression on me, and that impression has been permanent. It was the first time that I had seen the presuppositions of democracy questioned. Plato's objections seemed, and still seem, to me conclusive. I have never seen any satisfactory answer to them, and experience and observation seem to me to have abundantly confirmed them and to continue to do so every day. Certainly it is no answer to call Plato rude names, such as 'Fascist' or 'Communist,' taken from contemporary political controversy; or solemnly to point out that the Platonic republic at its best would not have been very pleasant to live in, and would not have been likely to last for long without deterioration. Plato was not particularly concerned with happiness; and one of his strongest points is his recognition that even the best laid state will inevitably degenerate sooner or later, and his analysis of the causes and the stages of that inevitable decline.
(C. D. Broad, "Autobiography," in The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 10 [New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1959], 1-68, at 46 [essay written in 1954])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 