"Tell people the truth, Mr. President"

[General Kenobi]

We could end up turning into Rome, where the focus is less on us and more on the political dealings of those higher up in the caste.

 

Which isn't to say we're not getting to that point. We're inching(and in some ways making yard passes) our way closer and closer to a dictatorship.

 

The US is already turning into that Bush even make a joke on how much easier it would be for him if it were a dictatoriship. Nice thing to "joke" about huh?...lol

 

I had NO CLUE that Saddam was Sweedish??? He sure looks like he's from Iraq

 

General Kenobi

[lukeiamyourdad]

I was refering to the 1650s, actually, although I agree that we have never had as good a democracy as that of Athens.

 

Because Athens had a really good democracy? One with slavery? One where citizens of lower classes had no voice among the populace?

Yeah, awesome democracy.

[Kurgan]

Pure Democracies can work, but they tend to work better on the smaller scale. The bigger it gets, the harder it is to have direct elections much less direct representation ("pure democracy" is where the people make the decisions and laws, rather than hiring representatives, if I remember my Jr. high social studies).

 

For an example of the scale problem, imagine if the Roman Catholic Church was democratic. 1 Billion people voting for a Pope... whoa! You talk about ballot counting problems! Then again with new technologies that might be more feasible now (then again much of the world citizenry doesn't have access to computers, much less internet capable ones).

 

Representation and the idea of "states" are (imperfect but workable) solutions to the problems of scale in our societies.

[toms]

The matter of scale is the problem that they are having with the EU.

 

Each member state is (braodly) democratic in electing its officials... but then how do you get those officials to work together? Make the EU process too directly democratic and people complain its taking power from member states, make it a meeting place of people designated by member governments and people claim its undemocratic.

 

--

 

Its kind of ironic that its only since the fall of communism (where an attempt to give power to the people resulted in a small ruling elite) that its become increasingly clear that capitalism has resulted in almost exactly the same thing. When we had communist dictatorships to worry about the west looked pretty rosey in comparrison, now its not looking so good. (good thing we have iraq, korea and terrorists to take our minds off it).

 

I was watching (of all things) the making of documentary for Resident Evil Apocalypse and i thought it was very telling that, when they attempted to explain the evil Umbrella Corporation as a bad guy, all of them (actors, producers, etc..) just took it for granted that people would understand big multinational corporations as evil, government controlling entities and that money was the driving force behind most actions and evil.

You couls almost see that sort of attitude being condemned as "unAmerican" back in the cold war.. but now very few would disagree with it.

[riceplant]

My point is that Athens had a true democracy (Albeit one where few got the vote), and to my knowledge, the world has not seen another true democracy since. No, I am not agreeing with slavery, which has nothing to do with democracy anyway, or denying the vote to women, but simply stating that we do not have a true democracy!

 

On a side note, when you say slavery, people immediately think of the oppresion of Black people at the height of the British Empire, and later, in America. When one researches it, slavery of the classical period was not nearly so bad (Although I still do not advocate slavery in any form), and slaves had some rights.

[lukeiamyourdad]

A democracy is where the power is in the hands of the people. Half the population of Athens were slaves. So say 50% remains.

 

Half of them are women. 25% voting population remains.

 

You also had to be born from athenian parents and be over 18. <20% remains

 

Yeah, the power was still in the hands of a certain elite.

 

So a democracy where over 80% of the population are not allowed to vote can truly be considered democracy?

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=democracy

[riceplant]

You seem to have missed my point completely. Again. I'm saying that it was far better than our current republican system in theory. If we were to adopt a true democracy, would that preclude women the vote? Automatically legalise slavery? No. And the power was still in the hands of more people than it is today. How many people would you say have power in America or Europe? And what is this as a percentage of the population? And I didn't know that slaves could not vote. They had many other rights that would not, today, be considered typical of slaves. In fact, they had more rights than your average middle ages European peasant. But this isn't a 'Classical slavery' topic. Or an 'Athenian democracy' topic, for that matter.

[lukeiamyourdad]

I'm saying that it was far better than our current republican system in theory.

 

No. You said this:

 

 

My point is that Athens had a true democracy

 

To which I reply was false, since the power was not in the hands of the people.

[riceplant]

I then reply that it was in the hands of more people than it is today, say, 0.000000337% of the Amercan people have power. I think I'd go with ~20%, as not everyone is allowed to vote today, e.g. children, convicts, immigrants. Here in England, we didn't even have a referendum over the war in Iraq.