So You belive that a welfare recipient should have a right to levy taxes on You ? Or that a childless cat lady should have the right to send You to die in a war ?
They cannot. Further, women cannot be allowed in leadership roles at all. Even the based Joan of Arc tier ones (those rare gems can use their skills in other ways). This is both a biblical and a practical imperative.
As the Weimer Republic was overthrown, there was much discussion on what would replace it. A question that was publicly posed and answered by those who later became part of the Reich was "Should we have a Republic or a Monarchy?"
The answer was that what matters was the volk, or the spirit of the people, and how we go about that is less important. A good republic is better than a bad monarchy.
John Adams touches on this when he said that our (American) system was intended for a moral and Christian people, and is totally unsuited for any other (he is admitting there that our Constitution will not work and should not be used for a society which is not Christian).
Democracy was never meant to be universal. Even the ancient Athenians, who invented it, allowed only free male citizens to vote. Women, slaves, residents and even some of the citizens (like criminals and those unable to pay their debts) were excluded.
The Greek system of democracy was totally different than what we call democracy today. I've been re-reading some classics material from college and Dr. Jeremy McInerney has some lecture series on ancient Greece that one can find online. The Greeks could be called both more "democratic" or universal, and less, than we are today. Mostly, this is because the word democracy has been so perverted that we interpret it differently than the Greeks would have.
Basically, what we have today is not a democracy (Power of the People--the people have no power in our democracy, and instead are utterly controlled even more than in so-called "repressive dictatorships" which are subject to the consent of the governed (Anglin talks a lot about how democracy is the ultimate form of control, with no room for redress of greivances)).
The system we have today is "DEMOcratic" ONLY in the sense that it is a collective group of people making decisions versus a single leader. But this group is not the DEMOS, or the people, it is politicians. The Greeks would not have understood the concept of representative democracy, or the idea of having an elected politician make decisions for people in a geographic area. And that is really one of the most awful things about democracy.
If you allowed the people to vote, would we be sending weaponry to genocidal Israel?
Or embargoing any Latin American leader who attempts to pull his people out of poverty?
Or forcing African nationstates to do anal?
Or forking over billions to the Ukraine?
No, and under the Greek system, the people would decide whether they wanted to do those things, whereas in the modern American system, we are absolutely unable to change 80 or 90% of society (the important stuff) and just have to accept whatever the Uniparty position is on those issues, while we get to "vote" for a person who will do things like change the marginal tax rate or reform a college loan program or something.
Another thing Greeks would not understand at all is political parties. Their were sometimes groups who congealed around debating a certain issue, but they did not meet again and force their views on OTHER issues. In other words the group of people who supported laws protecting clean water did not also meet and tell you "this is the acceptable viewpoint our group has on relations with Persia." That would be laughable to the Greeks. The idea that because you like one thing you must also accept a laundry list of positions that one of two groups has is utterly repressive and anti-democratic, yet that is the system we have in America.
Dr. McInerney:
Unlike modern representative democracy, ancient Athenian democracy involved the direct participation of every adult male citizen.
Essentially, what Athens created was an entire nation of Philosopher Kings. And if that could be replicated, then I would be in favor of group rule where you could qualify for voting the way we debating in this thread. But that exists nowhere on earth today, and until that can be created, an autocracy, or monarchy, or Third Position type system which included leaders of industry, culture, and scholars, each making decisions over their realm of expertise, is far preferable than giving the will of the nation over to popularity. But I'm still not sure that is compatible with the Christian historical edict of monarchy, with the sovereign serving as God's representative to his people on earth.
Athenian democracy is different in so many ways from ours today, that it is hard to distill comparisons between the two. To name a few, the Assembly met four times a month, had annual elections, rotating power, fully accepted the institution of slavery, excluded women from participation, political leaders were personally responsible for the well being of orphans and homeless, religious leaders held an important role in government, citizens were chosen by lot and served public / community service positions, and the vast majority of Athenian men served on their local council at least once in their lives. Comparing that system to what we have today and pretending they are both "democracy" is laughable.
But the bottom line, circling back to Adams and Weimar, and indeed the debates the Athenians themselves had before becoming a democracy, is that the people are most important, not how they organize and lead themselves.
