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Socrates was not innocent.

A martyr, perhaps, even the victim of an ancient Athenian witch hunt. But of the charge against him — encouraging his students to despise the democratic ethos of the time and set themselves up as tyrants over the foolish masses — the philosopher was profoundly, and proudly, guilty.

Thus was it maddening to see Utah's leading advocate for a lawless approach to immigration law cite Socrates as his, well, platonic ideal of respect for the rule of law.

In an op-ed column that appeared here the other day, Rep. Stephen Sandstrom cites both Plato's dialogues, ancient musings on the nature of humanity, and the Utah Compact, a modern statement of humane principles, to support his bill to direct state and local law enforcement officers to seek out illegal immigrants. As he seeks to bask in the glow of the increasingly influential Utah Compact, Sandstrom chides its authors for claiming to support the rule of law while opposing his additional efforts to enforce the law.

Of course, what the Compact really says is that, by the supreme law of the land, immigration law is the duty of the federal government. Those who would act otherwise are the ones in defiance of lawful authority. As Socrates might say, they are committing the great wrong, endemic in democratic societies, of answering evil with evil.

And Sandstrom cites the Crito, a dialogue in which Socrates explains to his follower Crito why he will drink the poison hemlock, as ordained by a jury of 510 Athenian citizens, rather that accept Crito's offer to help him escape. This Socrates was willing to do, Sandstrom argues, even though he was not guilty of the crime for which he had been condemned, out of respect for the laws of the land.

Of course, to evaluate Sandstrom's interpretation of the Crito, it is a good idea to follow the Creed of the Chicago News Bureau: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Checking this out meant not only reading the original — which I hadn't done since my father told me to put down all those silly science fiction yarns and read something important for once — but also consulting the most accessible source on the matter, I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates. (This is something liberal arts majors, those of us with "degrees to nowhere," are wont to do.)

Socrates had little respect for the rule of the law in Athens because it was a democracy, which both he and his prime pupil and scribe, Plato, actively loathed. Neither Socrates nor any of his disciples ever claimed he was innocent. Just that he was right, and that the puny democrats of the city were demonstrating just how unfit they were to rule by condemning their mental superior.

His acceptance of the verdict of death is, overtly, out of a sense of duty to the city which gave him birth, sustenance and some measure of fame and, at least as likely, a calculated attempt by a man who was near death anyway to martyr himself and give his ideas a life that would survive him by centuries. The great irony is that Socrates has come down to us as a martyr to the cause of free speech, a principle he overtly detested and refused to endorse, even when an appeal to it might have won him the mercy of the court.

It has also come down to us that Socrates was condemned for "corrupting the youth of Athens." But this was not about a man buying ouzo for the local teenagers and letting them use his chariot for late-night dates. Rather, the old coot was widely seen as the intellectual guru for the short-lived but bloody Tyranny of the Thirty, led by his pupil Critias, a cruel despot described by Stone as the "first Robespierre."

After the overthrow of that junta, the restored democracy pardoned the survivors and attempted to move on. But Socrates' continuing advocacy of rule by a self-selected elite led the city to decide — wrongly, by modern lights — that the wandering thinker was just too dangerous to have around.

Of course, Socrates would be a good mascot for a legislative body devoted, as Utah's is, to reminding us that we do not live in a democracy, but a constitutional republic, with wise lawmakers such as Sandstrom ruling over us.

It is just a question of whether Sandstrom misreads what Socrates is all about, or understands him all too well.

George Pyle is a member of The Tribune Editorial Board. E-mail: gpyle@sltrib.com. A blog version of this column, with links to sources and background material, is at http://www.sltrib.com/Blogs/debate.