Plato
In the 4th century BC, Plato wrote the highly influential treatise The Republic. Plato was no fan of democracy — either direct democracy where every eligible citizen would have the opportunity to vote on legislation or representative democracy where eligible citizens would vote on representatives who would in turn vote on legislation. He postulated that the best system would involve rule by “philosopher kings.”
He envisioned that a special class of people be given a specific education, available to few, which would include men and women as philosopher kings and queens. Out of this collective elite only the most virtuous and capable would become rulers. They would live simply and rule benevolently for the common good.
While his treatise has been widely read and praised for over two millennium no one has actually sought to institute rule by “philosopher kings,” at least until now. Here in Colorado we have begun to adopt a form of rule by philosopher kings that would have thrilled Plato.
Federal District Court judges in many ways resemble Plato’s ideal. They have a very specialized education (law) that is available to only a few. They live simply as federal court judges presently make only $169,300 annually. Like kings they are appointed for a life tenure. Among this class of philosophers (i.e. lawyers) federal district court judges are chosen by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the US Senate for their purported knowledge and virtuousness.
In Colorado we have seven regular philosopher kings (with one present vacancy) and five senior philosopher kings. They are almost evenly divided among Democrats and Republicans and include both men and women as desired by Plato.
To placate the Colorado masses, we have both pretend direct and pretend representative democracy but that is largely window dressing. Any time the masses do something egregiously stupid any of our philosopher kings can change it for the good of all of us.
Back in 2006 the Colorado hoi polloi in their atavistic ignorance and bigotry voted to have “their” state constitution define marriage as union of a “man” and a “woman.” Luckily philosopher king Judge Raymond P. Moore struck down that ridiculous bit of direct democracy as his legal wisdom was recognized as being correct in the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges.
Do not think that a dutiful philosopher king like Raymond Moore bothers himself with simply hotly contested issues. Recently in the case of Holland v. Williams he went after another bit of voter approved idiocy concerning campaign state finance reforms. In his wit and wisdom Moore decided he didn’t like the fact that private attorney generals (everyday citizens) could just bring claims against candidates or their campaigns without the claims being vetted by someone so he struck that provision down as unconstitutional.
It was the perfect case for a modern philosopher king where the plaintiff, Tammy Holland, and the defendant, Secretary of State Wayne Williams, both adamantly disliked the campaign finance laws in Colorado and so neither argued for it. Moore refused other parties who do support the campaign finance laws from entering into the case. What is so cool about the case is that since both plaintiff and defendant don’t like the law neither will appeal Moore’s decision to the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit so that Moore’s ruling can’t and will not be reviewed by anyone.
The best thing about being a ph
Judge Moore
ilosopher king like Moore is you can be as lazy as you want to be at times. Moore was too special to say how you vet the campaign finance complaints, just somebody should do it.
Secretary of State Wayne Williams is widely viewed as an establishment Republican hack who protects at any cost other establishment Republicans like Bob Beauprez and Walker Stapleton. He has now declared that he will simply do all the vetting of any complaints himself. Obviously, the voters of Colorado did not want politicians like Williams being the gatekeeper, but who cares what the voters want. The philosopher king can’t be bothered to decide and in in his absence the politically avarice Williams fills the void.
Other Colorado federal judge philosopher kings have also been active in their benevolent rule. In order to be placed on the primary ballot in Colorado, Colorado statutes provide one of the ways to obtain a sufficient number of signatures is to have petition gatherers who are Colorado residents. Six-term Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn could not be bothered with getting Colorado residents for petition gatherers and he was in danger of not making the ballot. First, he went to state court and lost all the way up, including the Colorado Supreme Court.
Luckily Federal District Court Ju
Judge Brimmer
dge Phillip Brimmer somehow decided that having Colorado residents collect signatures was a stupid idea that he didn’t like so voilá, he declared it unconstitutional and the Republican Congressman was back on the ballot.
Federal District Court Judge William J. Martinez recently decided he didn’t like parts of Amendment 41 which made it harder to change the state constitution by voters. He simply found significant portions of the constitution amendment to be unconstitutional.
These are but a few of many wonderful decisions by Colorado’s federal district court judges that make it clear dem
Judge Martinez
ocracy is largely a thing of the past here in Colorado.
Mark Twain sagaciously declared: “If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” We here in Colorado can vote and approve directly or through the legislative process anything we want, but it really doesn’t matter. We have evolved into a form of Plato’s ideal of rule by philosopher kings. Hopefully our experiment will continually be improved upon and we can dispense with the cost and annoyance of the pretend direct and representative democracy. We can then just directly petition our philosopher king federal district court judges to direct all aspects of our lives. It has taken almost 2,500 years to recognize that we need to live under the rule of philosopher kings as outlined by Plato but we here in Colorado have finally gotten it right and it will only get better and better over time.
- Editorial Board