YA-O-O-O-W-L! …

(American exceptionalism and misguided [W.] Bush, Obama-aided foreign policy)

DEMOCRACY IS?
A combination of two Greek words—demos (common people, people, the masses), and kratia (rule). Thus, rule by people. More specifically, rule by the common people or masses.

A DEMOCRACY PRIMER
At even a tribal level it is rare that all persons will be allowed to vote. Rather, the demos (voting group) will be all adult males, all adults, or a variation, depending upon who or what is being voted on. Always there are age restrictions. Women are sometimes excluded altogether. Excepting in a family vote, and even then rarely, the demos is never everyone.

The Greek city state of Athens, hailed as the “cradle of democracy,” and later Rome, also a model for modern democracy, never for an instant conceived of all people, the complete masses voting. Women could not vote, nor children. Nor slaves, who vastly outnumbered Roman citizens. Ownership of property was often a voting prerequisite.

The ideal has always been that a thoughtful, informed, deserving demos make up the voting block. Which makes sense.

It did not occur to the Founding Fathers of the new nation of America, extolled to this day for their wisdom and foresight, to allow all adults to vote at the national level. Women were disenfranchised. So were non-property owning adult white males. Notoriously enshrined in the American Constitution, property-owning male African-American freemen were accorded but 2/3rds the vote of white males. Continue reading →