To understand where we are going with this, we need to review the doctrine of the mean. Virtues always lie in between two extreme passions. A person who possesses the virtue of courage is somewhere between fearful and foolhardy. A good soldier is willing to give his life for his country but takes care to preserve his own life and those of his fellow soldiers. A person caught in vice has sacrificed the middle and is compelled to stay at an extreme due to a pleasure they get out of it. A foolhardy person wants so bad to appear courageous to his peers, he takes unnecessary risks. A fearful person wants security so bad he can’t move forward. We all take pleasure at times with pushing limits, but all should agree that virtue is the best place to be. This also has a political application.

We looked at what brings tyranny to a country. It started with a description of three types of authority; monarch, aristocratic and democracy. But technically there are only two. A monarch can be concluded to be an extreme form of aristocratic governing so we are left with aristocratic and democratic. On one side we have only the elite and best running a government and on the other we have the common people running things. The qualifications for aristocratic authority can be due to inheritance, a virtue of some kind such as war experience or simply having money. The qualifications for democratic are the various definitions of citizenship.

An aristocratic government becomes a tyranny when the leaders become more concerned with securing their positions, wealth and honor than the well-being of the citizens. A democracy becomes a tyranny when the majority of people lack virtue and want heroes to tend them rather than rising up themselves, solving their own problems and becoming better citizens.

There are two things at issue, quality and quantity. To be ruled by a few elitists has its obvious disadvantages for the common people. A democracy that contains people who are dependent and submissive will set the stage for abuse. The virtue of having a nation has to be somewhere in between. This is called the middle class or the mean. A country that has a large middle class both in virtue and in wealth will be the least likely to allow abuses from either direction, elite snobbery or complacent poor. A country that champions middle class leaders will contain satisfied citizens. The ultimate goal of a community would be to grow citizens who have enough virtue to handle either wealth or poverty with good character. Those of wealth giving others a hand up and those in poverty despising it enough to work their way into the middle class. The best way to do this, taking into account the particulars of a society, is what good political debate should be focused on.