Hillary Clinton On Democracy

Posted by admin on Jun 14, 2010 in Articles | 0 comments

Fox News criticized Hillary for telling European foreign ministers that the US was the first country in the world to establish democracy, while the Europeans claim that democracy begun in ancient Greece.

According to surviving historical records, the idea of democracy (Greek: dimokratia = people rule) was established in Greece around 2,500 BP (before present). The problem with this idea is that the ancient Greek democracy excluded women and slaves and was limited to Greek male nationals. Women of that time and region were no more than reproductive house slaves and the numbers of working slaves was often higher than the number of Greek citizens.

Before the Greeks, egalitarian tribes of the late Paleolithic and the Neolithic (50,000-5,000 BP) were the first to develop democratic systems. But as the world population grew, these tribes became male-ruled chiefdoms turned states and empires from 5,000 BP and on, eventually culminating in the Second World War which involved tens of millions of soldiers and most nations. The war was ended by the United States and its European and Russian allies, thereby freeing the West of the German national socialist regime, and paving the way to democracy.

The question is whether the West can talk about democracy as a done deal before actual gender, race and class equality is established.

The domestic violence statistics brought back into the spotlight by Chris Brown’s brutal assault of Rihanna and the view and treatment of such violent crimes by law enforcement, remind us that we have a long way to go.