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Democracy or “Democracy”? When our leading figures speak of democracy, it is not clear what they mean—nor do I think they even know themselves what they mean. It is pointless to talk about things if we don’t even understand the words we are using. So here is a brief review; apologies to those already knowledgeable on these matters. Real, original democracy was invented circa 550 BC by the ancient Greek legislator Cleisthenes, when he decided that “the people” (deme or demos) should be the ultimate ruling power (kratos) in the city-state of Athens. Thus, the adult male citizens—not the women, not the foreign-born—regularly convened on a hilltop in Athens to debate the issues of the day, and to vote on various proposals, great and small; they did so openly and publicly. Notably, the people did not vote for individual leaders; nearly all leadership positions, including the leader of the Assembly (who was the de facto president of the polis), were selected by lot, at random, from among a group of citizen volunteers. Imagine that: your president chosen by lot! No campaigns, no ads, no bribery, no kickbacks, no meaningless promises—just pull a name out of a hat. And it worked. The system had its pros and cons: on the one hand, governmental rule was simple, direct, and transparent; on the other, every uneducated, semi-ignorant man had an equal say to the wisest. It put the lesser men on a par with the greatest and best. And in doing so, “it grants a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike." But overall, it worked spectacularly well, and set the stage for the flourishing of Athenian culture over the next 300 years. But as Athens grew in size and power, and as foreigners and slaves increased in number, the issues became more complex, the democratic process became more unwieldy, and the simple, direct democracy had a hard time adapting. Thus, leading thinkers like Plato and, later, Aristotle, began to examine alternatives. Better than democracy, said Plato, was oligarchy: rule by the (rich) few. They might be money-grubbers, but at least they had some management skills and a vested interest in the flourishing of the nation. Better still was timocracy, or rule by the honor-seekers. Rather than striving to build wealth, as the oligarchs would, timocrats would emphasize the honor and glory of the city-state; this was a very good option. But best of all, said Plato, was an aristocracy: rule by the best, meaning the wisest or the most just. An aristocracy could be a small group of wise men, or it could be a single wise individual; this was largely irrelevant. What was important was that you sought out, educated, and trained your wisest men, or man, and then you let them lead. And that, said Plato, is the best that humans can attain. Democracy was a poor alternative, he wrote, but there was one system even worse: tyranny. Democracy itself was already a sort of tyranny—of the pleasure-seekers, of the “majority”—but a formal tyrant, as a single man, could rule with impunity, enrich himself and his cronies, and bring ruin upon the polis. The tyrant was, in a sense, the mirror image of the wise, aristocratic philosopher-king of the best system. In both cases, a single man rules, but the tyrant is neither wise nor just, and has simply seized power by force; whereas the aristocratic ruler, by virtue of his wisdom and justice, rightly assumes power and exercises it with due care and discretion. Of Plato’s five systems, all but a tyranny could plausibly be called ‘democratic’ in the sense that the people willingly accede to the system of rule. If the people agree to put a single, wise ruler in charge, and then to give him dictatorial powers, is that ‘democracy’? In a sense it is, but it would be unlike any current Western form. Arguably, this is the system of governance in Russia today, and to a lesser extent, China. Both rulers are “autocrats,” in the language of our oligarchs, but Russia does have national elections in which multiple people are on the ballot. And even if these are not “free and fair,” as we like to say, they do yield a single man to effectively run the country. China has no elections for its president, but rather the 3,000-member National People’s Congress selects him. Clearly there is no systematic process in either nation for seeking out the wisest ruler, but still, both sitting presidents have proven to be men of vision and substance—unlike, say, virtually every Western “democratic” leader of the past few decades. Modern democracy, it seems, is virtually designed to produce mediocre or incompetent leaders. And this is precisely what we get. But to conclude the point: Modern “democracy” is scarcely anything like the Athenian original. “Democracy” is marked by a number of characteristics that would have been appalling to the Greeks: it has universal suffrage (women, minorities, and foreign-born can vote); it is a representative system, not direct (we vote for senators and representatives, who in turn vote on issues); we vote for individuals, including the president; and corrupting money gushes through the system like a torrent—primarily Jewish money, as it turns out. Do President Biden, VP Harris, and all those other politicians understand the difference here? Of course not. Have they studied political theory? Unlikely, to say the least. Have they read Plato or Aristotle? Never. When such people use the word ‘democracy,’ they literally do not know what they are talking about. Clearly, our modern-day “democracy” is something very different, something that has mutated from the noble Greek ideal, retaining only the name. Worse, it has become positively detrimental to national well-being. -Thomas Daltton