Is Democracy Viable
By, Thomas Sowell
March 1, 2011
"Freedom and democracy cannot be simply conferred on anyone. Both have preconditions, and even nations that are free and democratic today took centuries to get there.
We should not assume that our freedom and democratic form of government can be taken for granted. Those who created this country did not.
"As the Constitution of the United States was being written, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what he and the other writers were creating. He replied, "A republic, madam-- if you can keep it." Generations later, Abraham Lincoln also posed it as a question whether "government of the people, by the people and for the people" is one that "can long endure."
Just as there are nations who have not yet developed the preconditions for freedom and democracy, so there are some people within a nation who have not. The advance toward universal suffrage took place slowly and in stages.
Today, we take universal literacy for granted. But literacy has not been universal, across all segments of the American population during all of the 20th century. Illiteracy was the norm in Albania as recently as the 1920s and in India in the second half of the 20th century.
Bare literacy is just one of the things needed to make democracy viable. Without a sense of responsible citizenship, voters can elect leaders who are not merely incompetent or corrupt, but even leaders with contempt for the Constitution limitations on government power that preserve the people's freedom. . . ."
~ Read entire article @ Jewish World Review
