The root of the word “republic” is the Latin phrase “res publica,” or “public thing.” It’s another word for “commonwealth,” the thing people all own and have responsibility over, together. And, as usual with Latin words and concepts, there’s a Greek antecedent. We call Plato’s most famous dialogue The Republic, but it was really called the Πολιτεία — or, transliterated, the Politeia. It was about how to organize a “polis,” a people, a city, a society, in community.
This word, “polis,” has many English derivatives that are important to reflect on. When we behave in an appropriately benign way toward the other members of our community, in a way that is what the psychologists might deem pro-social and what the Romans would have called decorous, that is called being “polite.” The area of human endeavor in which we try to organize affairs at the group level and make large decisions for many people all at once is called “policy.” When we fight with one another over who gets to set policy and how they get to set it and debate what sorts of things will be wise to do in that arena, we call that “politics.” That’s the area of life having to do with the people as a whole: “Politics” literally means things about the people.
But there’s more than one people, of course, and more than one type. A “cosmopolitan” is someone whose “polis” is the “cosmos,” someone from everywhere. Superman is from a loosely veiled version of New York called Metropolis. The reason why you can go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Metropolitan Opera in New York is because these institutions are supposed to represent the best of what a big city has to offer, the names a little reminder of what sets apart my home polis.
Then there is Minneapolis, whose name Tom Stoppard would object to. Stoppard, who obsessed deeply about words, once joked that “homosexuality is an abomination: it’s made of both Greek and Latin.” (“Homo” is a Greek phoneme for “same,” and “sexuality” is from the Latin.) “Minneapolis,” like “homosexuality,” is a mutt word, made from two original languages. “Minnea” comes from a Sioux word for water. It’s added on, of course, to “polis.” After a week with Minneapolis defined more by fire than water, the City Council announced that the city would “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.”
The head of that City Council, Lisa Bender, recently wondered this aloud on Twitter, which implies a certain prediction about what her city will be like without police: “If you are a comfortable white person asking to dismantle the police I invite you to reflect: Are you willing to stick with it? Will you be calling in three months to ask about garage break-ins? Are you willing to dismantle white supremacy in all systems, including a new system?”
The whole reason police abuse of citizens is such a betrayal and an outrage over and above ordinary violence is because somebody needs to do the job we pay and outfit and empower the police to do. That is why their job title, too, derives from “polis.” When they instead act like a criminal gang, or when we disband them, it leaves the public without a crucial thing.
