Plato's Republic

I read a bit of Plato in high school, as I think everyone does--in particular, the Parable of the Cave, which I found quite thought provoking. But I never read Plato's Republic, although I often see it referenced. This has never bothered me, and perhaps it should. (Hey, I'm a computer geek, not an intellectual.)

Anyway, I'm reading Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Ideas That Changed the World at the moment. It's a series of two page articles, lavishly illustrated, about various major ideas...well, the title gives it away. The page on "Philosopher-Kings" has this to say about The Republic and Plato:

Among philosophers, Plato was surely the best-ever writer and perhaps the greatest-ever philosopher. He was, however, a member of an Athenian brat pack of rich, well-educated intellectuals, who resented democracy and felt qualified for power.

When he wrote his prescriptions for the ideal state in The Republic, they came out harsh, reactionary, and illiberal. The many objectionable features--censorship, repression, militarism, regimentation, extreme communism and collectivism, eugenics, austerity, rigid class structure, active deception of the people by the state---all had a baneful influence. The key idea, however, is that all political power should be concentrated in a self-electing class of philosopher-rulers called Guardians. Their qualification for office would be intellectual superiority, guaranteed by a mixture of heredity and education, which would make them selfless in their private lives and "godlike" in their ability to see what was good for the citizens.... His Guardians are the inspiration and intellectual ancestors of the elites, aristocracies, party apparatchiks, and self-appointed "supermen" whose justification for tyrannizing others has always been that they know best.

Except for the militarism--and at least on some topics, censorship, this is a disturbingly accurate description of the intellectual, media, and political elite of the Democratic Party.