Similarly, the world forgets that the first democracies were not in Greece but in India at least around 500-600 years before Greek democracies, if not more!
People and cultures that are the most boisterous and showy usually garner the most attention and followers. It used to be Europe in general, now the best and worst of Europe are embodied in the USA, which is the new representative of Europe/West in the world.
Human beings worked out the moral frameworks of life, which includes concepts such as freedom, way before recorded civilisation began. These are all very, very old thoughts.
@chilloutab2 What are you talking about? We have no free elections. I don't know what your monologue about India is intended to achieve. What are you hoping to achieve? All of this nonsense is irrelevant. Are you also irrelevant?
Which country were you born in? I know of very few real democracies. Are you from Switzerland? If not, where is this country you are from and consider to be a democracy? The bigger the country, the less democratic it can afford to be. All of these western democracies ignore their citizens and meddle where they are not wanted. “Elected representation” is a lie.
@emiliya Our individual emotional responses towards the state of a democracy does not impact any reality. The USA is a democracy, whether any individual agrees or not, so is Canada, so are the UK, France, India, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. etc. etc.
The purpose of my posts was, following up on the OP's questions, to clarify that thoughts held to be uniquely American or even Western, are indeed way older and more universal. I used democracy as a counter point to illustrate how the world thinks the West (specifically Greece) is the original democracy, but the truth is that democracy in various states was flourishing elsewhere in the world way before the Greeks implemented it Just as freedom and the desire for it was not an American thing founded in 1776, but actually as old as humanity itself. Since the OP mentioned West Africa as the birth place of democracy and you mentioned hunter-gatherer groups being democratic, I sought to clarify in my response that we would need records of functional, sophisticated democratic systems for a society to be considered a democracy, and the earliest of these, to my knowledge, are found in India. I don't think there is any relevance to where I was born, live or am a citizen of to the topic, because this is not personal.
@chilloutab2 The USA is a Federal Republic, not a democracy. And that's not me agreeing or disagreeing, that's what the USA actually is.
Apparently, to call it a representative democracy or a representative republic, are the same thing according to Professor Akhil Reed Amar. He's the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. One of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars and author most recently of The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760 to 1840.
A Republic comes from Latin. It's two words, race publica, race means thing. So publica, the people, or the public, the people's thing.
That's a republic. Democracy is rooted in the Greek, Demos, Kratia or Kratos. It's ruled by the people. So you see even in their etymology, they're pretty similar. The people's thing ruled by the people. Here's how James Wilson actually describes both of these concepts, he says here's the key idea.
Quote, "Whether we call it a republic or democracy," quote, "The people at large, retain the supreme power and act either collectively or by representation." So you can have a representative republic or a representative democracy. And there are many advantages of the representative principle.
To say that the USA is a straight up, direct democracy is incorrect though.
According to Professor Amar, The USA is both. They're pretty synonymous, and I'm perfectly comfortable calling it a constitutional democracy. So it is important to understand that whether we say Republic or democracy, potato. These big concepts are defined by specific rules and principles in our constitution itself.
Now, the word Republic does appear prominently or cognate in Article 4 of the Constitution, which guarantees to each state a Republican form of government. But what I and most scholars who have looked very carefully at the issue believe is that a Republican form of government and a democracy are roughly synonymous.
Many people came across the ocean to come to this country prior to 1776 . Pilgrims came to escape the England church to allow the chance to practice their religion.
