Art Webb wrote on 04/16/15 at 21:42:41:The UK is NOT a democracy, neither is the US. The only true democracy in history was Athens, where every single citizen voted on every single issue
This ignores of course the fact that most of the people of Athens were not technically citizens, either
the UK is a Constitutional Monarchy, as the US is a Constitutional Republic
China calls itself a Republic, too, but the people in that country are most definitely subjects, not citizens, with no say over the laws their government imposes
I don't want to be pulled into semantics over rxactly which is which,
(in Italy we use a funny expression, "don't ask me to play the pharmacist", i.e., weigh everything with a precision scale to the 10th of a milligram
)
In Athens, which was not Always a democrasy, only CITIZENS had the right to vote...
OK...
BUT...
WHO WERE CITIZENS WITH THE RIGHT TO VOTE, IN ATHENS?
You had to be a MAN
= male sex
= who had served his time in the ARMY
You had to be a FREE MAN
= not a servant/slave to anybody else,
= not a freed slave or a slave for debt who had worked his way to freedom,
= not a man working under wages under anybody else (i.e. skilled labor)
You had to be BORN OF A FREE WOMAN
= not the child of a woman servant
= not the child of a free woman born a foreigner
You had to be born an ATHENIAN
= not an immigrant,
= not the son of an immigrant,
= not the grandson of an immigrant,
You had to be EDUCATED
= your family was rich enough to pay for your home tuition
BUT THE TUTOR... WAS HE A FREE MAN OR A WELL-LEARNED SERVANT/WORKER ?
So... let us assemble the Tiles of this puzzle:
- MAN - 50% of the population,
- BORN FREE - 50% of all male men,
- ATHENIAN - 25% of all free men,
-
LIVE OF FAMILY WEALTH - 75 % of all Free AtheniansGRAND TOTAL OF ATHENIANS
HAVING THE RIGHT TO VOTE ? 5 %
As for "Citizens", they were "ALL FREE Athenians", males, fit for battle.
Women didn't count (unless you were Socrates' wife Xanthippes, in which you made history as a Cl.1A nagger
)
Slaves obviously didn't count,
the
Proletariat was essentially made of free slaves and traveling skilled labor
Foreigners had no way of becoming "citizens", you needed to be a 3rd/4th generation resident to qualify.
This criterium was also used by the Church in the Middle Ages to determine who was a "Good Christian": not a Converted Jew!
Hence the typical expression "I am a 7th generation Roman" meaning "I am 100% purebred Roman from before anybody and anybody's grandfather can remember".
When Athens needed money to pay for the war effort against the invading Persians, they borrowed from two rich bankers, neither of which was (nor had any hope of becoming) Athenian.
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