Quote Originally Posted by Red Harvest
Well, duh, it can traced because we have written records. And yet there is a huge gap in there where democracy was absent. It did not return until the shackles of the aristocracy and Church were thrown off over two millenia later. Might I remind you that Athen's democracy destoryed itself? The oligarchs won. And so VDH transferred attention to Rome, which was a republic. Carthage was also a sort of elected republic as memory serves... The Framers of the US Constitution actually feared Athen's form of govt. from what I've read.


Hurin challenged the idea of democracy's origins. Your "duh" is misplaced.


Yes the Athenian experiment failed. The idea of democracy did not disappear however. It survived and revived with the return of Classical knowledge. Though typically rejected as akin to mobocracy the notion persisted. Regardless, the ultimate reformation of democratic norm occurred in the West.



More importantly we lack information to know how many other societies operated. It is a huge leap to assume that it did not exist elsewhere...considering that there were other elected forms of govt. existing at the same time that we do know of.


This is an appeal to ignorance. The historical record is based on evidence. The evidence of democracy in the West is clear. If there is no evidence of a democratic superstructure with other civilizations one cannot conclude it existed.



Recent scientific method is oversold. There were scientific communities well before the 17th Century in various fields. People tested various facets of the world arround them, proposed explanations, and recorded the information. Agriculture and animal husbandry have been with us for many thousands of years. You would be hard pressed to claim there was not scientific method involved throughout. The development of siege technology in Assyria and again later in Syracuse are further examples of science in action.


Science is a specific theoretical posture. It is composed of clear principles: physical data, inductive logic, notions of symmetry, verification etc. It can be traced to two specific individuals: Descartes and Bacon. This does not mean people did not learn or study prior to the 17th Century. It does mean that the formal system we call science was not a distinct method.


So you know for a fact that no other nations/groups had a system that protected individual rights before that time? There is no way of even knowing. Talk about drawing conclusions from incomplete sampling...


This is also an appeal to ignorance.



You sound like VDH... I've spent time working in Asia and can appreciate differences of several Asian societies, and I reject VDH's drivel.

Singapore's model is interesting. I'm not sure that I fully understand it but I can recognize some things about it from my time there. China seems to be emulating it as a way to catch up. One might even argue that Singapore's approach is closer to a capitalism/market based govt than any Western govt. which tend to be more bound more by the contraints of individual liberty and property rights (I prefer our way, but theirs seems to work for them so it is worth trying to understand why.)


Singapore was a British Colony. Its distinctive status and infrastructure are a reflection of this history. Capitalism is a Western construct. Lee's rhetoric and the reality are not necessarily the same.