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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: of the country.
Thus born into the world and thus educated, the ancestors of the departed
lived and made themselves a government, which I ought briefly to
commemorate. For government is the nurture of man, and the government of
good men is good, and of bad men bad. And I must show that our ancestors
were trained under a good government, and for this reason they were good,
and our contemporaries are also good, among whom our departed friends are
to be reckoned. Then as now, and indeed always, from that time to this,
speaking generally, our government was an aristocracy--a form of government
which receives various names, according to the fancies of men, and is
sometimes called democracy, but is really an aristocracy or government of
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