The most ancient form of democracy is found among virtually all indigenous peoples of the world. It's the way humans have lived for more than 150,000 years. There are no rich and no poor among most tribal people--everybody is "middle class." There is also little hierarchy. The concept of "chief" is one that Europeans brought with them to America--which in large part is what produced so much confusion in the 1600s and 1700s in America as most Native American tribes would never delegate absolute authority to any one person to sign a treaty. Instead decisions were made by consensus in these most ancient cauldrons of democracy.
The Founders of this nation, and the Framers of our Constitution, were heavily influenced and inspired by the democracy they saw all around them. Much of the U.S. Constitution is based on the Iroquois Confederacy--the five (later six) tribes who occupied territories from New England to the edge of the Midwest. It was a democracy with elected representatives, an upper and lower house, and a supreme court (made up entirely of women, who held final say in five of the six tribes).
As Benjamin Franklin noted to his contemporaries at the Constitutional Convention: "It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies."
The Framers modeled the oldest democracies, and the oldest forms of the middle class, and thus helped create the truly widespread and strong first middle class in the history of modern civilization.
Back in Europe, however, the sort of democracy the Framers were borrowing and inventing, and even the existence of a middle class itself, was considered unnatural. For most of the seven thousand years of recorded human history, all the way back to the Gilgamesh Epic, the oldest written story, what we call a middle class is virtually unheard of--as was democracy. Throughout most of the history of what we call civilization, an unrestrained economy and the idea of hierarchical social organization has always produced a small ruling elite and a large number of nearly impoverished workers.
Up until the founding of America, the middle class was considered unnatural by many political philosophers. Thomas Hobbes wrote in his 1651 magnum opus Leviathan that the world was better off with the rule of the few over the many, even if that meant that the many were impoverished. Without a strong and iron-fisted ruler, Hobbes wrote, there would be "no place for industry . . . no arts, no letters, no society." Because Hobbes believed that ordinary people couldn't govern themselves, he believed that most people would be happy to exchange personal freedom and economic opportunity for the ability to live in safety and security. For the working class to have both freedom and security, Hobbes suggested, was impossible.
Our nation's Founders disagreed. They believed in the rights of ordinary people to self-determination, so they created a form of government where We the People rule. They declared that all people, and not just the elite, have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." (In that declaration, Thomas Jefferson replaced John Locke's famous "life, liberty, and property" with "life, liberty, and happiness"--the first time the word had ever appeared in the founding document of any nation.) They believed that We the People could create a country founded on personal freedom and economic opportunity for all. The Founders believed in the power of a middle class; and in defiance of Hobbes and the conventional wisdom of Europe, they believed that democracy and a middle class were the "natural state of man."
As John Quincy Adams argued before the Supreme Court in 1841 on behalf of freeing rebelling slaves in the Amistad case, he stood before and pointed to a copy of the Declaration of Independence:
That DECLARATION says that every man is "endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights," and that "among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.". . . I will not here discuss the right or the rights of slavery, but I say that the doctrine of Hobbes, that War is the natural state of man, has for ages been exploded, as equally disclaimed and rejected by the philosopher and the Christian. That it is utterly incompatible with any theory of human rights, and especially with the rights which the Declaration of Independence proclaims as self-evident truths.
It turns out that the Founders knew something Hobbes didn't know: political democracy and an economic middle class is the natural state of humankind. Indeed, it's the natural state of the entire animal kingdom.
For example, biologists used to think that animal societies were ruled by alpha males. Recent studies, however, have found that while it's true that alpha males (and females, in some species) have the advantage in courtship rituals, that's where their power ends. Biologists Tim Roper and L. Conradt discovered that animals don't follow a leader but instead move together.
James Randerson did a follow-up study with red deer to prove the point. How does a herd of deer decide it's time to stop grazing and go toward the watering hole? As they're grazing, various deer point their bodies in seemingly random directions, until it comes time to go drink. Then individuals begin to graze while facing one of several watering holes. When a majority of deer are pointing toward one particular watering hole, they all move in that direction. Randerson saw instances where the alpha deer was actually one of the last to move toward the hole rather than one of the first.
When I interviewed Tim Roper about his research at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, he told me that when his findings were first published, scientists from all over the world called to tell him that they were seeing the same thing with their research subjects. Birds flying in flocks aren't following a leader but monitoring the motions of those around them for variations in the flight path; when more than 50 percent have moved in a particular direction--even if it's only a quarter-inch in one direction or another--the entire flock "suddenly" veers off that way. It's the same with fish and even with swarms of gnats. Roper said that his colleagues were telling him that from ants to gorillas, democracy is the norm among animals. Just like with indigenous human societies--which have had hundreds of thousands of years of trial and error to work out the best ways to live--democracy is the norm among animals, and (other than for the Darwinian purpose of finding the best mate) hierarchy/kingdom is the rarity.
Thus, we discover, this close relationship between the middle class and democracy is burned into our DNA--along with that of the entire animal kingdom (an ironic term, given this new information). In a democracy there may be an elite (like the alpha male deer), but they don't rule the others. Instead the group is ruled by the vast middle--what in economic terms we would call a middle class.
A true democracy both produces a middle class and requires a middle class for survival. Like the twin strands of DNA, democracy and the middle class are inextricably intertwined, and to break either is to destroy the viability of both.
In human society as well, to have a democracy we must have a middle class. And to have a true middle class, a majority of the people in a nation must be educated and economically secure and must have full and easy access to real news so they can make informed decisions. Democracy requires that its citizens be able to afford to take care of themselves and their families when they get sick, to afford a decent place to live, to find meaningful and well-paying work, and to anticipate--and enjoy--a secure retirement.
Above the level of local politics there is no democracy in the United States. We have been governed by corporations since 1867. Herr Goebles would have been overjoyed to have had a media like we have today. We need a revolution in the worst way but how many voices have been heard expressing this reality?
We are a country of immense wealth and have children sleeping in the streets. We have more people in jails and prisons than all of the other countries in the world put together. We have 12 aircraft carrier groups roving the worlds oceans and no conceivable enemy. Nuclear prolifertation is a direct result of our possession of a nuclear arsenal that could blow up our solar system. Our military has 700 bases around the world--many of them equipped with golf courses and generals fly around in private jets.
Get the wool out of your ears.
by
gramps (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 107 comments)
on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 at 4:15:17 PM
We need a revolution in the worst way but how many voices ..
Don't you just love the intellectual socialist revolutionists? You can classify them because they all call for action and yet that is all they do , talk loudly. And people here still question why nothing changes for them or the US? Sounds like a MENSA meeting.
As for the subject at hand, I can find no primate studies that suggest that group consensus as a regular method of decision making. At best you have the betas contesting an alpha's decision. And usually the betas just ignore the alpha pair whenever possible.
/Sorry have a hard time equating herbivore patterns with actions of a human society. We are not all sheep (or deer as the case may be).
by
Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 150 comments)
on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 at 4:59:58 PM
The bird says....:
/Sorry have a hard time equating herbivore patterns with actions of a human society. We are not all sheep (or deer as the case may be).
I logically respond:
No we are not some of us, apparently, are annoying little children.
If you would care to contribute to a discussion Im sure your comments would be carefully considered and polite response might be forthcoming. But so far all you do is ridicule, and with no intellectual bent apparent. That makes you more than a bit buffoonish, dontcha think?
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 at 6:02:07 PM
I post here because Rob is a hypocrite(per his group email), strangely enough just like many of you. I post here because I can see the flaws of an argument that will be repeated elsewhere.
You claim that I post like a child and cause disharmony or some such. So I guess that must be why you belittle those who completely oppose your viewpoint. I find it , a common statement by liberals, that the oppositoin is a moronic, childlike, etc. and yet take umbrage when called the same.
Let's face it , I am not here to reach a consensus.
I am here to comment and provide my opinion on articles that leave out facts, are selectively in their sourcing or just mutual ass kissing.
I would point out that gramps feels free to insult the president, as you do it seems, yet you get idignant when you and your ilk are insulted, or even it seems chided for your intellectual dishonesty. I do not see you countering my actual statements. Go ahead just call them baseless, but since I have been posting my views since the late 80's on the internet, I would point out that I usually am right. And that you and yours don't seem to actually accomplish anything in the long run. But you sure do write alot.
/so let me guess Nam vet ardee, do you say the US lost the war in Vietnam? if so did we lose in Korea? And just who lost the cold war of which Nam was a part of?
//And sorry Rob did not tell me this was a mutual feel good site, although with this many liberal intellectuals it was bound to happen.
by
Vulture (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 150 comments)
on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 at 7:11:18 PM
and have noted that you quickly wear out your welcome in these forums. The reason, knowing full well that your abysmal ignorance of the topic at hand and lacking any insight into your own childish methodology, is because you do not discuss the gist of the article, do not present opposing views of what is being discussed and bring nothing but a Junior High School sort of moronic insult to the discourse.
Very seldom does one find a neocon who can bring it, as they, like you, tend to be blind followers of those who do their thinking for them. The major difference between you and those here you disparage is in the amount of time and research being done to arrive at political positions. You get yours predigested from the drug addicted Rush Limbaugh, the psychotic liar Bill O'Reilly and the rest of that ilk.
You may be a legend in your own mind but your posts are nothing but paeons to your stupidity.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Wednesday, September 6, 2006 at 7:19:05 AM
Firstly I must say that I really enjoy your radio show....
I do not know about the birds and such but I do know that the middle class has been under assault by the neoconservative movement and is shrinking yearly. Perhaps your except points out the reasons......
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Tuesday, September 5, 2006 at 6:04:16 PM
The most revolutionary minded of all the founding fathers was the radical writer, Tom Paine. With flaming hopes, a vision of a new world and compelled by the spirit and determination of its people to resist British occupation, Paine devoted himself to the American cause. He began with a forty page pamphlet, "Common Sense" which emboldened the settlers to become compatriots and rise up in rebellion. His words formed a nation where democracy is still being defined.
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine
William Blake penned, "Imagination is evidence of the Divine" and Tom Paine imagined, "We have it in our power to begin the world again." Paine's imaginary democratic government would guarantee freedom to all, and above all else freedom of conscience and worship -which required keeping the church out of state affairs. It was in that spirit that he wrote about Independence Day: "Let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know...that in America THE LAW IS KING."
"...a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine
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