Despite the fact that we so often refer to the ancient Greeks for our whole obsession with Democracy here in the U.S., most of us acknowledge that it wasn’t all Skittles and Slice. Beyond the obvious difficulties of actually involving the populace, and the relatively short time the radical idea was implemented, exactly who the demos was was also in question. Women were not citizens (so forget Sarah Palin for VP), and thus could not vote (among other things), and the definition of a citizen male wouldn’t be exactly obvious to a contemporary democrat. For example, Barack Obama would not be a citizen in Ancient Greece because his father was not a citizen. Even if he was eligible by lineage, upward mobility from landless, impovershed kid to landed (and horsed, for that matter) man would have been nearly impossible and thus, again, he would not have been a citizen.
And now that I’ve shared that little tidbit, I’m back to my “real” work.
Leave a Reply