Changes In Democracy: From Early Athenian To Present Day Politics Essay

democracy From Early Athenian To Present Day Politics. When following actual events we cant help but witness politicians use wrong such as defending freedom, liberty, or majority rule, but one is simply left wondering if the general public, or even the politicians themselves, know what those terms really mean or where they bang from. The reality is that most dont. The imagels of living in a nation have been drastically changed from their original meanings and diluted into persuasive political style to become mere rhetoric as opposed to meaningful concepts of respectable and moral value. The word democracy is thrown rough to make convincing, patriotic speeches that many times are utilized to usurp the rights and property of peoples in the name of this most sacred of political concepts in the history of horse opera civilization. In order to better understand the true meaning of this idea we must go back to its roots and search for the original intentions butt it. We must f ind the similarities and differences between Hellenic democracy and ultramodern solar day democracy. By separating the two we can learn how distant they are from individually other. Without a clear understanding of the history involved we are intimately blinded by the eloquence and charisma that politicians utilize to control the populace.Democracy dates back to the Golden Age of Greece or the Classic Period. Not moreover an organized, centralized nation Greece was made up of warring urban center-states none of which feature full control over its neighbors. During this period and under these circumstances at that place was a tremendous advancement in classic thought embrace philosophy, politics, medicine, mathematics, and the sciences to name just a few areas of influence that still watch over a strong Greek legacy today.Of all the Greek city-states it was capital of Greece that gave birth to many of the political philosophies that still survive today. At around 600 B.C.E Athens was in severe economic, social, and political crisis. It was then that a plentiful aristocrat named Solon emerged to produce for Athens its first comprehensive repair of political rules and regulations, overhauling the constitution, reining in the plutocrats, and giving decent measure of power and responsibility to the moderately well-off non-aristocrats. He also provided some legal... ...of a city (Minogue, p.11).Unfortunately we have non kept the best of these ideas. In modern day politics rationality is no longer paramount. It is the reason we see the influence of politicians full of arrogance, believing in the superiority of their own consent trying to amass power through the use of the ancient Greek political concepts. Modern day politicians, mostly American, attempt to use emotion, not reason when addressing the American people. It is with great sadness that as we have witnessed with the pull through election this notion succeeded and now under the banner of val ues and terror will exploit the ignorance of the general public.Cartledge, Paul. The Greeks Crucible of Civilizations. New York TV Books, 2000Freeman, Charles. The Greek Achievement The Foundation of The Western World. New York Viking Penguin, 1999Martin, Thomas, R. Ancient Greece From Prehistoric To Hellenistic Times. London Yale University Press, 1996Minogue, Kenneth. Politics A Very Short Introduction. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1995Pomeroy, Sarah, et al. Ancient Greece A Political, Social, and Cultural History. New York Oxford University Press, 1999