Winning is never the most important thing. In a political context, the most important thing is justice. Justice is the only source of political legitimacy.

There is nothing inherently just about democracy. A democracy is only as just as the demos. (A demos is a group of people, “a people”, understood as a political body. Democracy is the self-governing of a demos.) Therefore, if one wishes to use democracy as an approximation of justice, or as a political hypothesis on the way to justice, (which remains, despite everything, a very good idea), one must first of all consider education.

Education (on justice), as the “sine qua non”, is therefore the first responsibility of democratic governance. Education (on justice) would be the heart and the soul of a legitimate democracy. What this looks like (education) is an open question. But it must look like something. There must be some idea (even hypothetical) of justice, cultivated through education, (obviously, public), in order to preserve (even the hypothesis of) the legitimacy of democratic governance.

(What is justice? The government would not have to know, or even claim to know, but it would have to ask. Without justice, it is nothing. So the demos might pose hypotheses, and learn or decide ways to judge between them. If the demos discovers a good hypothesis of justice, then this, and the practice of keeping it alive—which is what political education is—would be a foundation for the stability, function, and health of the demos, and therefore of the democracy. This, and nothing else, is what would make possible a healthy and legitimate democracy.)

But without education, there is neither justice, nor a people. If a government claims to be a democracy, and it does not hold sacred the work of education, then it will function only so long as the demos preserves a rigid and un-adaptable idea of itself. (A conservative political identity falls back on arbitrary characteristics, racial genetics, cultural superiority, personal wealth, or other dysfunctional place-holders for justice.) But moreover, if a government claims to be a democracy, and it does not hold sacred the work of education, then it surrenders (even the hypothesis of) its legitimacy.

To repeat. Without education, (One would do a lot of work at this point, for the sake of responsibility, to complete the demonstration, which is something of an argument-by-adventure. But few have the training or stamina, these days. And we are all very tired. Maybe this is a lapse.

)…(

Study, e.g., the entire Platonic “corpus”, but especially the Republic, from which all of this, although the author artfully renounces authority. An orphan argument, but nonetheless), democracy surrenders its legitimacy.

As a “democracy” (lacking education) fails, (which it does from its inception, because it is nothing), the fragmentation of the demos becomes more apparent. (And feels awful.) Lacking a relevant or coherent education, individuals respond in different (haphazard) ways to the dawning recognition that they are participants in an ongoing (historical, natural, perhaps cosmic) in-justice. (Against themselves as against outsiders, through imbalance external and internal, with rapid exacerbation of symptoms. The problem appears to be everywhere.) Without a demos, individuals need, seek, and find their own private (idios) educations. Many gather shouting under the ugly banners of partial ideas. It is complicated and contentious. But recognizing the basic problem, diagnosis is trivial. That is not a democracy. That is an illegitimate regime, a people without a soul, at a loss (aporia) to heal (the hearts, minds, bodies of) its broken (political) self.

That is not self-government, but a multitude of tyrannies. And a multitude of tyrannies inevitably approaches war.

Winning is still not the most important thing. (Winning is never the most important thing. Not even in war.) (Consider Achilles, or Odysseus in his next life.) But it may be that losing—beautifully—becomes the new (oldest) measure. Which, like a divine gift, opens up whole other worlds of action.