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Sure and when the US was founded the majority of residents were similarly not allowed to vote because voting was restricted voting to a minority of property-own
by angiolillo 10mo ago
Sure and when the US was founded the majority of residents were similarly not allowed to vote because voting was restricted voting to a minority of property-owning white males over the age of 21. Democracy has evolved from its Athenian origins, presumably sortition would as well.
- hrimfaxi 10mo agoI think their point was that it only worked because of such a cohort to randomly select from.
- angiolillo 10mo agoThat was also my interpretation and why I made the point that democratic processes have evolved to account for a changing polity. The US government could not be managed by Athenian sortition any more than it could be by Athenian direct democracy -- the citizenry is too different, the questions too complex. However, just as the Romans evolved their original Athenian-style direct democracy into representative democracy as their empire grew and became more heterogeneous, sortition has similarly evolved into deliberative democracy.
- groundzeros2015 10mo agoWell I’m saying more than that. There is no historical precedent for our democratic system. Not Romans, Greeks, or 13 colonies. Why cite them? Nobody has ever had a system with 300 million people having almost direct voting while simultaneously having no definition of a citizen besides “born here”. I’m skeptical. The Trump/Fetterman/RFK phenomenon is the fruit of this democracy, not an unlikely aberration.