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Editorial

By the People, For the People

by Rick Lewis

Is democracy in crisis? Last year I listened to a philosophy lecture on the Pnyx, the hill where the assembly of ancient Athens used to be held. I was thrilled at the thought of democracy’s birth 2,500 years ago at the very spot where I was standing. It was a direct democracy with a limited franchise, but it was government by the people for the people, and it was a great Athenian invention. After Athens succumbed to Macedonia and then Rome, democracy became a dormant idea for many centuries. It came back very slowly, but made huge gains in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, as dictatorships and one-party states toppled in Eastern Europe and South America.

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