Thank you for your response.
The real reason certain people are “born to rule” has less to do with their control of water canals or whatever and more to do with the only real “superpower” that exists. It’s called charisma, and it’s the power to get people to obey you out of love rather than fear. Some people are born with this superpower and some are not; here in the West, we call a person with charisma a “born leader” — the no-nonsense captain of the football team, for example, or the stern-but-wise teacher all the kids love, or the bright-eyed and witty schoolgirl who, though perhaps not the most physically attractive girl in school, still commands an army of loyal girlfriends and a herd of starry-eyed boys using nothing but sheer charm.
Charisma tends to run in families. Of course, this is no guarantee that any given menber of a “gifted” family will be charismatic; it is merely another trait that gets passed down in families. Charisma is furthermore not limited to “good guys”; most of history’s most horrible tyrants have possessed great personal charisma.
Yes, autocracy has risks. The powers of an autocrat (or an authoritarian government) are essentially unlimited, and can be used for great evil. However, the same can also be said of a democratic government. Sure, “Constitutional limits and checks and balances on powers” are there, and theoretically our government cannot exceed its constitutionally-delimited powers. But in the final analysis the Constitution is a piece of parchment, and, given the right circumstances, the U.S. government can assume powers that far exceed those specified in the Constitution. The President has executive powers about which most world dictators could only dream: he can, upon his own authority. confine innocent U.S. citizens to concentration camps, confiscate their property, declare the existence of a state of war, federalize National Guard troops and send them into the cities to confiscate guns, restrict travel on Federal-Aid highways (i.e. all highways) to “official traffic only”, shut down the air, water, and rail transport networks, commander the public airwaves, confiscate personal property for government use, suppress trade unions, nationalize vital industries, tear screaming children from their dead mothers’ arms and deport them, and send in stormtroopers to burn little kids alive inside their own homes.
And these are only the things that the courts have approved! Given a national emergency, he could pretty much do anything — suspend habeas corpus, order national curfews, cancel all passports, herd all Irishmen into gas chambers, order the euthanasia of every person over 65 — anything. Yes, such acts would be illegal, but (as Andrew Jackson famously pointed out) in the end, the Congress and Supreme Court have no means of actually preventing a president from doing anything he wishes to do; the Army has the power to defeat any challenger or combination of challengers for the executive power; as long as the Army goes along with him, the President of the United States — or of any country — has unlimited personal power.
The progression of power in the Roman state is instructive. The Romans were never big on democracy, and so the Roman Republic was controlled by the Senate, who chose the Consuls (and, in time of emergency, the Dictators) that held the actual executive power. In time, however, it became obvious that the toga-dpared aristocrats in the Forum had no means of enforcing “the will of the Senate and people of Rome” on an ambitious general with a Legion or two of personally-loyal soldiers at his back. Julius Caesar was acclaimed dictator for life by the Senate not because he charmed it out of them, but because his power was a fait accompli.
As with Rome in 44 BC, so today: in the final analysis every leader — Princeps, President, King, or whatever — is nothing more than the man (or woman) who can compel the Army to follow him.
First, a couple of minor corrections - male suffrage in the Athens of Pericles' day was not universal; it was in the hands of those wealthy enough to afford a suit of armor, and their corresponding obligation was to employ the latter in violent defense of the city. These were the hoplites. And Caesar was not the first Roman autocrat; that distinction belonged to Sulla, who let him live despite his relationship to Sulla's rival Marius (Caesar was his nephew). The "fall" of the Roman republic is a rather deep topic, actually, and I get the sense Mr. Lewis might want to consult Machiavelli on the topic before he concludes that the republic was either better or worse than the two monarchies between which it was sandwiched.
Those matters aside, we are left to contemplate the willing subjugation of a polis to a self-identified ruling class which is more or less exclusive based on familial relationships. I disagree completely that this "tends" to run in families; it does, however, attempt to propagate itself that way, naturally enough, until a more talented, forceful, or ruthless competitor kicks the thing over and assumes his or her own "natural" rule. A "natural" ruler may attempt to teach it to his or her children with more or less, mostly less, success.
Here I defy Plato utterly. He was well-reasoned, coherent, and completely mistaken. The yearning for a philosopher-king is what brings us sensational nonentities such as Barack Hussein Obama. He isn't my better in any sense, and I take the position of the ranch foreman Forbis quoted after being asked who his master was: "The son of a bitch hasn't been born yet." Nor will he be.
Let me be even more blunt - I reject autocracy as a false and deceptive refuge in order that is intolerable to any free man or woman, a sad recourse of an individual caught between gangs of armed thugs who must compromise or die. I reject autocrats and would-be autocrats as fools, poseurs, and justifiable objects of target practice. The first one stupid enough to say "I am your natural ruler" out loud had better by God be wearing body armor.
I honestly don't care what patterns Mr. Lewis flatters himself that he has discerned among the peoples he has visited and evidently comprehended to an astonishing degree. I've done a little traveling myself and I gently suggest he's underestimating them. The notion that human beings do not desire freedom is a lie. It is a lie.