ed with informers where people live in terror of the secret police.But maybe instead we should think of spectacular trials in our own time, such as the O.J. Simpson trial now going on, where the jurors are enjoined from having any private conversation with each other about the proceedings. Or perhaps we should think of Woodrow Wilson's desire for "open covenants openly arrived at" in his Fourteen Points put forwards as proposals to end World War I. It is clear that the Utopians are meant to have free debate in their assemblies.[32] No political assembly of theirs is to be the rubber stamp affairs that we have seen in our own time of so-called "people's democracies" and the "cult of personality." In the city of Aircastle or Amaurotum, as the Latin has it, every law relating to the public good has to be debated at least three days.[33] Still, the rule against private discussion of politics represents extreme distrust of the people, and in that distrust Utopia and modern dictatorships share more than is sometimes supposed.Again, I must say that Utopia is not intended to be a dictatorship. The commonwealth itself is a federated republic. It has no king. In a commonwealth where individuality is almost non-existent, no cult of personality is possible. No one in Utopia except the eponymous founder Utopus is given a name. No individual stands out above the others. Utopia is a commonwealth of anonymous masses. Raphael can relate the opinions of the Utopians as if everyone on the island shares them. He quotes no one, for one generalization fits all.The fine leisure the Utopians can enjoy because of their six-hour working day is carefully regulated. The pursuits the Utopians enjoy are primarily intellectual. And even here we do not find specifically mentioned the solitary intellectual mulling that is for some of us one of the chief joys of life. They seem to debate one another in the style of the Platonic dialogues--as More and Raphael do in Book ...
