The Democratization of Democracy

Mutation or Demise: by Henry Beissel

Democratic practices reach back to the millennia of our nomadic ancestors, but in our Western civilization, democracy first became a form of political governance in Athens and other city-states of fifth-century Greece. Though its practice lasted barely two centuries before it was crushed under the boots of a Macedonian army, the dream of democracy lived on. Its struggle against the reality of oppression and tyranny finally triumphed in eighteenth-century enlightenment when the American Declaration of Independence (1776) affirmed it

to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed… with inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…

These principles, along with their succinct summation in the rallying call of the French Revolution — Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! — have become the universal standard of liberal democracy in our time. What they demand is that a nation shall be ruled by, in Daniel Webster’s phrase, “the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.”

In the 21st century, most countries in the world consider themselves democracies, but few, if any, satisfy Webster’s lofty definition. MORE