Understanding what Ordered Liberty does not entail powerfully informs our understanding of what rights are affirmatively protected by the United States Constitution.
The Framers and Founders of the United States, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, left no doubt that their Constitutional system of Ordered Liberty was incompatible with the Platonic model for an Ideal Commonwealth. E.g. Federalist Paper No. 49; Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams (July 5, 1814), in 2 The Adams-Jefferson Letters, at 432-34 (Lestor J. Cappon ed., 1959) (hereinafter "Letters"); Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (June 28, 1812), in Letters, at 308; Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (September 15, 1813), in Letters, at 377, Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (July 16, 1814), in Letters, at 437; Letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (October 10, 1817), in Letters, at 522. The United States Supreme Court has similarly rejected the Platonic model as being unconstitutional. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 401-02 (1923).
The Framers and Founders understood that state control of society, education, and childraising interferes with the ability of individuals and families to enjoy the liberties of the Bill of Rights and especially the First Amendment. Because creative ideas often emanate from eccentric persons and defy contemporary social norms, the homogenization achieved by a commonweal will eventually curtail innovation, cause stagnation, and lead the commonweal to collapse under the weight of its own corruption. Plato supplied the blueprint for one kind of society the Framers and Founders intended to prevent through a system of constitutional law.
It behooves legal and political scholars, therefore, to understand the Platonic model for an Ideal Commonwealth and its central place in the tradition of totalitarian thought. Below is the relevant text of Plato’s Republic, edited to remove the extraneous puerilities and jargon criticized by Thomas Jefferson:
For men born and educated like our citizens, the only way . . . of arriving at a right conclusion about the possession and use of women and children is to follow the path which we originally started, when we said that the men were to be the guardians and watchdogs of the herd.
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Let us further suppose that the birth and education of our women to be subject to similar or nearly similar regulations; then we shall see whether the result accords with our design.
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. . . . [D]o we entrust to the males the entire and exclusive care of the flocks, while we leave the females at home, under the idea that the bearing and suckling their puppies is labour enough for them?
No . . . they share alike . . .
But can you use different animals for the same purpose, unless they are bred and fed in the same way?
You cannot.
Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education[.]
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. . . [As to] any law about the nature and possession of women and children ["the problem to be solved is anything but easy"].
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Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defense of their country . . . .
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Here, then, is one difficulty in our law about women, which we may say that we have escaped; the wave has not swallowed us alive for enacting that the guardians of either sex should have all their pursuits in common . . . .
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The law . . . which is the sequel of this and of all that has preceded, is to the following effect,--`That the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.'
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I do not think . . . that there can be any dispute about the very great utility of having wives and children in common; the possibility is quite another matter, and will be very much disputed.
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I think that if our rulers and their auxiliaries are to be worthy of the name which they bear, there must be a willingness to obey in the one and the power of command in the other; the guardians must themselves obey the laws, and they must also imitate the spirit of them in any details which are entrusted to their care.
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. . . [L]egislator[s], having selected the men, will now select the women and give them to them;--they must be as far as possible of like natures with them; and they must live in common houses and meet at common meals. None of them will have anything specially his or her own; they will be together, and will be brought up together, and will associate at gymnastic exercises. . . .
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. . . [H]ow can marriages be made most beneficial? . . . . [A]ttend[] to their pairing and breeding[.]
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. . . [T]ake care to breed from the best only[.]
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. . . . [O]ur rulers will find a considerable dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their subjects: we were saying that the use of all these things regarded as [having medicinal value for society] might be of advantage.
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. . . [T]his lawful use of them seems likely to be often needed in the regulations of marriages and births.
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. . . [T]he best of either sex should be united with the best as often, and the inferior with the inferior, as seldom as possible; and that they should rear the offspring of the one sort of union, but not of the other, if the flock is to be maintained in first-rate condition. Now these goings on must be a secret which the rulers only know, or there will be a further danger of our herd, as the guardians may be termed, breaking into rebellion.
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. . . [T]he number of weddings is a matter which must be left to the discretion of the rulers, whose aim will be to preserve the average of population[.] There are many other things which they will have to consider, such as the effects of wars and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as far as this is possible to prevent the State from becoming either too large or too small.
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We shall have to invent some ingenious kind of lots which the less worthy may draw on each occasion of our bringing them together, and then they will accuse their own ill-luck and not the rulers.
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. . . [O]ur braver and better youth, besides their other honors and rewards, might have greater facilities of intercourse with women given them; their bravery will be a reason, and such fathers ought to have as many sons as possible.
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The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter; but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be.
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They will provide for their nurture, and will bring the mothers to the fold when they are full of milk, taking the greatest possible care that no mother recognizes her own child; and other wet-nurses may be engaged if more are required. Care will also be taken that the process of suckling shall not be protracted too long; and the mothers will have no getting up at night or other trouble, but will hand this sort of thing to the nurses and attendants.
. . . [T]he wives of our guardians [ought] to have a fine easy time of it when they are having children.
. . . . [P]arents should be in the prime of life[.]
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A woman . . . at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to the State, and continue to bear them until forty; a man may begin at five-and-twenty, when he has passed the point at which the pulse of life beats quickest, and continue to beget children until he be fifty-five.
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Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part . . . shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing; . . . his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust.
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And the same law shall apply to any one of those within the prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated.
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This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age: after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not marry his daughter or his daughter's daughter, or his mother or his mother's mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from marrying their sons or fathers, or son's son or father's father, and so on in either direction. And we grant this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such a union cannot be maintained; and arrange accordingly.
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Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond of unity?
There cannot.
And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and pains--where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions of joy and sorrow[.]
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. . . [W]here there is no common but only private feeling a State is disorganized--when you have one half of the world triumphing and the other half plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or citizens[.]
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Then ["in a well-ordered State"] when any of the citizens experiences any good or evil, the whole State will make his case their own, and will either rejoice or sorrow with him[.]
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But is there not another name which people give to their rulers in other States?
Generally they call them masters, but in democratic States they simply call them rulers.
And in our State what other name besides that of citizens do the people give the rulers?
They are called saviours and helpers . . .
And what do the rulers call the people?
Their maintainers and foster-fathers.
And what do they call them in other states?
Slaves.
And what do the rulers call one another in other States?
Fellow-rulers.
And what in ours?
Fellow-guardians.
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. . . [W]ould any of your guardians think or speak of any other guardian as a stranger?
Certainly he would not; for every one whom they meet will be regarded by them either as a brother or sister, or father or mother, or son or daughter, or as the child or parent of those who are thus connected with him.
. . . . [T]he care of a father [is] . . . implied [as well as] . . . the filial reverence and duty and obedience to him which the law commands . . . .
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. . . [I]n our city the language of harmony and concord will be more often heard than in any other. . . .
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And they will have a common interest in the same thing which they will alike call `my own,' and having this common interest they will have a common feeling of pleasure and pain[.]
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And the reason of this, over and above the general constitution of the state, will be that the guardians will have a community of women and children[.]
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[T]he community of wives and children among our citizens is clearly the source of greatest good to the State[.]
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. . . [T]he guardians were not to have houses or lands or any other property; their pay was to be their food, which they were to receive from other citizens, and they were to have no private expenses; for we intended them to preserve their true character of guardians.
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Both the community of property and the community of families, as I am saying, tend to make them more truly guardians; they will not tear the city in pieces by differing about `mine' and `not mine;' each man dragging any acquisition which he has made into a separate house of his own, where he has a seperate wife and children and private pleasures and pains; but all will be affected as far as may be by the same pleasures and pains because they are all of one opinion about what is near and dear to them, and therefore they all tend towards a common end.
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And as they have nothing but their persons which they can call their own, suits and complaints will have no existence among them; they will be delivered from all those quarrels of which money or children or relations are the occasion.
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And as the guardians will never quarrel among themselves there will be no danger of the rest of the city being divided either against them or against one another.
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I hardly like to even mention the little meannesses of which they will be rid, for they are beneath notice: such, for example, as the flattery of the rich by the poor, and all the pains and pangs which men experience in bringing up a family, and in finding money to buy necessities for their household, borrowing and then repudiating, getting how they can, and giving money into the hands of women and slaves to keep--the many evils of so many kinds which people suffer in this way are mean enough and obvious enough, and not worth speaking of.
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And from all these evils they will be delivered, and their life will be blessed as the life of Olympic victors and yet more blessed.
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The Olympic victor . . . is deemed happy in receiving a part only of the blessedness which is secured to our citizens, who have won a more glorious victory and have a more complete maintenance at the public cost. For the victory which they have won is the salvation of the whole State; and the crown with which they and their children are crowned is the fullness of all that life needs; they receive ["glorious"] rewards from the hands of their country while living, and after death have an honourable burial.
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At the same time I ought here to repeat what I have said elsewhere, that if any of our guardians shall try to be happy in such a manner that he will cease to be a guardian, and is not content with this safe and harmonious life, which, in our judgment, is of all lives best, but infatuated by some youthful conceit of happiness which gets up into his head shall seek to appropriate the whole State to himself, then he will have to learn . . . `half is more than the whole.'
. . . Stay where you are, when you have the offer of such a life.
. . . [M]en and women are to have a common way of life such as we have described--common education, common children; and they are to watch over the citizens in common whether abiding in the city or going out to war . . .
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Observe . . . that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth.
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And so . . . we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common; and that all education and the pursuits of war and peace are also to be common, and the best philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings[.]