Blatantly false. After the Constitution went into effect, a whopping 6% of the population could vote. You had to own a certain amount of property, be male, and not be a Native American or black person. It wasn’t a democracy. It was an apartheid oligarchy, and very intentionally set up that way. The founders didn’t want the masses of people to vote; several of them were quite afraid of it.
The USA only became a democracy in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act and its guarantee of universal suffrage. America became a democracy in spite of its origins, not because of it.
Yeah the only places that had more democratic means were basically a handful of weird German city states or were gone by the 1700s. The Icelandics arguably were more democratic before being brought under Norway and the Witan of medieval England was similar but both were gone by then.
Even then, it’s still not a particularly democratic democracy, e.g. disallowing felons from voting means people experiencing problems with the current law have no power to change it. When a citizen’s right to vote is conditional, suffrage is not universal.
Blatantly false. After the Constitution went into effect, a whopping 6% of the population could vote. You had to own a certain amount of property, be male, and not be a Native American or black person. It wasn’t a democracy. It was an apartheid oligarchy, and very intentionally set up that way. The founders didn’t want the masses of people to vote; several of them were quite afraid of it.
The USA only became a democracy in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act and its guarantee of universal suffrage. America became a democracy in spite of its origins, not because of it.
Compared to most other countries at the time, it was very democratic.
Yeah the only places that had more democratic means were basically a handful of weird German city states or were gone by the 1700s. The Icelandics arguably were more democratic before being brought under Norway and the Witan of medieval England was similar but both were gone by then.
Even then, it’s still not a particularly democratic democracy, e.g. disallowing felons from voting means people experiencing problems with the current law have no power to change it. When a citizen’s right to vote is conditional, suffrage is not universal.