From: wag5@quads.uchicago.edu (john peter wagner)
Subject: Re: THE CLINTON DOCTRINE
Keywords: significant words from a document used as an index to content
Reply-To: wag5@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 19:24:09 GMT

In article <Bvuz9A.4HK@news.cso.uiuc.edu> StarOwl@uiuc.edu writes:
>wag5@quads.uchicago.edu (john peter wagner) writes:
>
>: >>|> Democracies do not go to war with one another.
>: >>Bullshit
>: >Name two.
>: 	Athens and Sparta, two city-states with perhaps the greatest
>: eligible voter turnout ever known to Democracy, warred against each other.
>: Rome and the Germanic tribes, tribes led by Democratically-elected leaders
>: went to war.
>
>In each of these cases, just how much of the population was allowed to vote.
>I doubt that women were allowed to vote, and I really doubt that slaves
>were allowed to vote.

	In our own country, there is an age limit; people under 18 are
not allowed to vote. You might say that we have not had a
Democracy until women's suffrage.  In that case you would be mocking
the founding fathers, who were setting up a 'Democratic Republic.'
No, the slaves were not allowed to vote. Women had a degree of
greater freedom than the women of pre-suffrage America.  If you
reply to the chilren point 'wellll, the children are incompetent,
too young to vote..' then I might add that slaves do not have much
vested interest in the continued existence of their master's status.
That was the rational for both limitations on non-property-holders
and slaves.  Sparta and Athens had MORE INVOLVED DEMOCRACIES than
OURS in AMERICA, which is simply a REPUBLIC with DEMOCRATICALLY-ELECTED
REPRESENTATIVES AT BEST. In Greece the voters had REAL responsibility.
WE DO NOT HAVE A 'TRUE' DEMOCRACY. OUR 'DEMOCRACY' IS IN FACT LESS
OF A DEMOCRACY THAN THE ATHENIAN OR SPARTAN POLIS'.

>
>I know for a fact that Rome was NOT a democracy.  At best, it was a 
>republic.  And that was only at certain times in Rome's history.

	Beyond the fact that Rome had a Senate which was all-powerful
until the Senate assasinated Caesar seems to disagree with your notion.
Even so, the Roman government formed the closest model to our own. Many
aspects of Roman law are in use in America today.  During the expansion
of the Democratic-Republic of Rome the barbarians were a constant threat
or the people who were being conquered, the people who were already there.
Read Hans Delbruck's Volume II of the History of War.

>In how many of these "democracies" were _all_ of the country's official
>decisions voted upon by the people?
>

	In our 'Democracy' how many of the country's official decisions
are voted upon by the people?

>Your four examples are not *real* democracies.

	They are, however, the closest things to Democracies which
history can show us.  America has a far less direct-representational
Democracy than Sparta, Athens or the Germanic tribes;  Rome would be
the closest analogy to modern day America.  Perhaps I should add
the Weimar Republic.  Your vote means a drop in the middle of
Lake Michigan in the scheme of things.  That's a fact jack. If you
could get millions to vote with you, that's another story. But you are
politically insignificant.  The Athenian or Spartan citizen weighed
each decision very carefully. People drink free beer at the Democrat
convention or receive state pay or something and say 'oh hey, I think
I'll umm....vote Democrat..Yah, that's the ticket-free food and effortless
occupation...Plus I can be in with the 'hip' crowd....'

>Michael Adams

			John



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