4 ms·

I didn't imagine my statement would be so controversial. Granted, it's just my personal opinion, but if women aren't citizens that's not a democracy either.

• gjm11 13y ago
  > if women aren't citizens that's not a democracy either. And if children aren't citizens? If immigrants (who live in the country, pay taxes, etc.) aren't citizens? The place where democracy first happened, where the name came from, was ancient Athens circa 500BC. The only people allowed to vote were adult male citizens who had been through military training. I do (lest there be any doubt) agree that a polity in which a large fraction of the population can't vote is an unsatisfactory sort of democracy. But I think what's wrong with these places is that they are bad democracies, not that they aren't democracies. (The line between "bad democracy" and "not democracy" is a bit fuzzy. Take an ordinary democracy and say that you can't vote if your net worth is negative; what you get is, at least in my opinion, a bad democracy but still a democracy. But say that you can't vote unless your net worth is in the top 5% of the population and you've got a plutocracy. The transition between the two is a gradual and ill-defined one.)