We are being told these days that democracy has had a good run, but now it’s time to move-on. Time to face-up to the fact that our old, rusty, worn-out democratic republic is obviously antiquated and incapable of churning-out the changes we so desperately need. Let’s cut down on those bothersome rights, deep-six that archaic Constitution, and slip into something far more comfortable; you know, compassionate, caring, and forward-looking. Sounds simple!
………Really?
Before we toss democracy into history’s dustbin, I think it might be wise to take a closer look.
Let’s start by going back to the beginning. Remember this? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This is the first line of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. From this, two things have always jumped-out at me. The first is Jefferson’s use of the term “all men,” and the second is the idea that the truths he listed were – and presumably still are – “self-evident.”
We understand now that Jefferson was not referring to all men at all, but specifically white men, and that women were not even within the realm of consideration. Fortunately, over time, these omissions have been rectified, and the current principle – that all people are created equal – is now the gold standard for rights across Western democracies.
That Thomas Jefferson did not actually mean what he wrote has been justly criticized. And that belies another truth not often acknowledged; democratic thought is now and has always been, evolving conceptually. Jefferson’s limited democratic principles were a product of his limited American culture. As American culture evolved, so did our inclusive conception of democracy. In that sense, democracy should be thought of as developmental, and like all things developmental, it had to start somewhere. Right? But how exactly did democracy get started in the first place? From whence democracy?
