Being Dangerous
2nd November 2021
If you are a good man living in a bad regime, you will necessarily be a bad citizen. That is Aristotle’s teaching. The current controversies surrounding the Claremont Institute, particularly its various fights with both the Left and Right, must be understood in this light.
What Aristotle meant is that if a regime is unjust, it will regard as good citizens only those who are unjust in the way the regime is unjust. Anyone who refuses to acquiesce in the regime’s injustice will be regarded as dangerous. Precisely the just men and women will be seen as disloyal to the ruling authority and as politically illegitimate. In the early 1940s, Germans who sheltered Jews were bad citizens of the Third Reich, and Russians who circulated books critical of Marxism were unfaithful to the ideals of the Soviet Union.