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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics
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To: koan who wrote (54727)10/8/2013 3:23:05 PM
From: TimF   of 85487
 
The ancient Greeks came up with the idea of democracy

Its not actually clear that they did. They were the first that we have a solid historical record of having implemented democracy, but that isn't the same as the first who had democracy, let alone the first to have the idea. It seems that other people at least had the idea before, and may have put it in to practice.
Then as they were destroyed we lost it for the next 1,500 years.

Athenian democracy pretty much ended when Alexander took over. 1500 years after that was in the 1100s. Briefly there was an Athenian elected leader in revolt against Rome from 88 to 86 BC. There was no sudden massive flowering of democracy in either the 1100s or in the early 1400s. And things were pretty lousy economically and otherwise for many people back then.

In any case democracy didn't go away when it died in Athens, the idea was aways around, and always a relatively minor factor, just as it was in the world at the time of Athens, when few places were democracies.

Before democracy the church tortured people who said things they didn't like.

And before democracy dinosaurs where all over the place. I'm really glad that democracy came along so that I don't have to worry about being eaten by an allosaurus.

Those with dominate power have often tortured people they don't like. The Catholic church primarily lost its power to kings not to democracy. Democracies have also tortured people. People are less likely to be tortured now, but that's more a matter of increased openness, liberty, and the rule of law (none of which are as strong as I'd like, but all are in better shape than at many points in the non-recent past.
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