I enjoy learning from my listeners. Not long ago I received a call from a Mr. Mike Holcomb down in Florida, who brought to my attention a passage in Plato’s Republic. It nicely backed up term limits.

I looked up the seventh book of The Republic, and found Socrates talking to his young friend Glaucon. This is what he says: “The State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.” Socrates defines a bad political society as one where men “are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good.” The wise, he thought, should rule not out of desire for power, but of necessity, and definitely not for the full duration of their adult lives, their “careers.”

Plato framed this discussion in terms of education. Today we live in a modern democratic republic, not Plato’s imagined one, but education remains key. In our political environment, rulers learn from the ruled as much as the ruled learn from the rulers.

And we must all be wary of the lessons taught. When citizens vote politicians long careers in office, they teach those politicians some bad lessons. About power. About status. About how to be “above it all.”

But with term limits, voters can easily resist the temptations of powerful displays, and politicians are less tempted into thinking themselves above the populace.

Good lessons. Ancient truths.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.