Imprecise Destinations: The Continual Redefining of Democracy PART 1

Everybody. Welcome to Nontrivial. I'm your host, Sean mcclure. In this episode, we take a look at democracy specifically the continual redefining of democracy throughout the ages. We're going to challenge some of the usual Western narratives that it takes a certain type of place or people in order for a democracy to take foot or to take root. We're going to see that it can flourish under all different types of conditions in circumstances.

We're going to challenge the usual narrative that democracy started in Athens, Greece and see that it had many contributions from many different societies across the globe, across different parts of the world at different times throughout history. We're going to take a look at some of the underlying mechanisms, the pros and cons, how it spread, how it popped up, how it fell down and eventually move into some of the ways that we can model democracy.

You know, mathematically, what are some of those core things that drive it and really just take a look over all of, you know, what is good about democracy, what is bad about it? You know, we'll see that it's more of a process and a specific well defined or precisely defined thing. And I think that's a really important conversation to have. Obviously democracy is important when it applies to people and societies.

But even just trying to find democratic solutions, you know, whether it's within organizations or even from an engineering perspective, your engineering systems that need to have kind of a democratic vote. If you will, of the different components that contribute to it, it could be an economic solution that's needed a social solution. Whatever it is, democracy is an important topics. We're going to take a look at how that played out through history.

All the various contributions, the ups and downs are going to challenge a lot of the narratives that we've heard throughout time. Take a look at some of the mechanisms of extra parliamentary democracy and how democracy gets democratized, how it spread, how it doesn't and make kind of a final call at the end about what this thing democracy is. So I think it's an important topic. There's lots to get through. We're going to do this in two parts. So let's get the part one started. Now let's go.

This week's book is The Life And Death Of Democracy by John Key, The Life And Death Of Democracy by John Ken. This is uh just under 900 pages long. So um you know, it took a bit to get through it. It's uh definitely an interesting read. It's packed with a lot of details. A lot of fascinating stuff about the history of democracy that many people probably wouldn't know unless you've been reading about democracy for a while now. And that's been a topic that you've been interested in.

You know, it really goes into the different origins, the influences across different civilizations, different societies, different tribes, you know, getting away from this kind of usual narrative that we hear on the West that it all came from Athens, Greece, which is just simply not true. There's a lot of different uh areas of influence across the world. And throughout time, that contributed, contributed to this thing that we call democracy. And that should not be overly surprising.

You know, we've talked about this pattern before this idea that, you know, there were no giants, there's only shoulders, right? Um And, and that, and that just goes back to this idea that, you know, we, we like to assign the root cause of something to, you know, one person or one place or one society. And just statistically, that doesn't really make sense, right?

In complex situations, you should always expect an overwhelming mountain of contribution from various agents, different people, different sources.

And there really isn't this path, let alone a root cause of a single thing, especially something as you know, um important uh like democracy, right, or a scientific invention or some type of innovation or really anything that, that is just nontrivial, right is not going to have a root cause it's not gonna be singular, it's unlikely you're going to actually peel back the layers and, and, and see the causal chain that, that produces the thing that you look at.

So the life and death of democracy um has this kind of, I would think unsurprising, although it might surprise a lot of people um aspect to it or truth to it, which is that democracy doesn't have a single area where it started. It doesn't have, you know, you can't just say, you know, it came from Athens or that it's particularly Western, this is just not true. Uh although of course, the West and, and, and particularly Athens had major contributions to it.

So I want to take a look at that story that uh you know, that reality of democracy and you know, democracy is an important concept. It's not just about people coming together, you might be engineering systems that need to be democratic, right? Different components, maybe you're a software developer and you want to have a microservices architecture and the different micro services that contribute to the overall system design should kind of be democratic.

You need to have different pieces come in and have good representation. You might be doing this in, you know, machine learning, you might have an ensemble approach of your machine learning model and you need some kind of democratic uh kind of resolution of the different predictions that get made that you combine together, it could be an economic solution, it could be whatever it is.

When you come up with these solutions to things, getting good representation from the different components that come in to produce. It is typically uh a good thing to have or at least there are situations where that is the case. And of course, when we think of democracy, we think of society uh that usually to most people, especially in modern history seems like a really good thing. We want uh you know, most people to have a good voice to be represented.

We'd like to think that the decisions that the leaders make at the upper levels of government are reflective of what society wants, what's in the best interest for the most, most people possible. So let's go ahead and jump into that. So let's start with that democracy not starting in Athens um aspect that John Ken talks about uh again in his book, The Life and Death of Democracy. So democracy uh has always kind of been taught to us as a, as a strictly Western world invention, right?

We think of it essentially as coming from the West. That's what most of us would hear. Uh We, we hear about Athens as essentially being the birthplace, but democracy didn't just start in one location.

We'll take a look at some of the uh the the the various uh societies and, and even tribes that had democratic language and, and certain mechanisms in place that tried to bring in the representation of the people uh even in times when, when we normally associate it with monarchies and, and uh and, and perhaps tyrants and, and different strong leadership.

Remember in the last episode, we talked about, you know, the, the kind of the concentration or the lack of dispersal of power that happens when you have single leaderships in, in all these places, you've got, you know, more or less kind of democratic conversations, but they're there.

And so we'll take a look at the, the different influences that, that that happened, you know, but again, and, and for non uh for, for Patreon viewers, you can see that visual on the right, this idea that, you know, I've got question marks and bubbles just kind of saying where do things come from in non-trivial situations? You should expect no single root cause you should not expect to be able to uncover an end to end causal chain that produces the output.

We know that that's a fundamental property of complex systems. So this idea that democracy just started in Athens is actually kind of ridiculous on its face. And that's not to downplay the contribution that Athens make but has made throughout history. But we should really think of that as having many different contributions by humans right across the globe throughout time.

Another important thing I want to talk about is this idea that sometimes democracy gets framed as though it was born from secular thinking. You know, it was trying to like get away from maybe the church and get away from belief and myth. Uh you know, whether that was, you know, pagan style myth or polytheistic gods uh as, as you would see in Greece or the monotheistic, you know, religions of the world. But democracy uh was not actually born from secular thinking.

And John King really talks about this. It was, you can almost think of it as ordained by the gods. Something about the belief in gods fueled the idea that individuals were important. Remember our, you know, my, my episode, non-trivial episode on uh on, on a return to magic and the role that this kind of belief in something supernatural or a higher power or a myth or magic tends to have this kind of byproduct to it that pushes you forward. We've seen that in the sciences.

You've seen that a lot of science actually owes it. It, it's progress to the belief in kind of myth and magic and, and the supernatural. And it's not because necessarily anything supernatural is playing a role in the science. Although you may or may not believe that it's that, you know, the the reach kind of has to exceed the grasp. We expect there to be indirect targets, you know, good things come from a byproduct of something else. And so i it's not about aiming at something directly.

It's a lot of times when you aim when you have this higher ideal about morality or about, you know, the ultimate meaning of life, you, it tends to push you in good directions in very productive directions. Even if the thing that you end up inventing is itself kind of secular itself, not necessarily related, at least according to some people to the belief in something like a God.

So democracy, uh an example of this is, is that, you know, whether it's Greek society or other societies, the belief in something like a higher power, uh actually made you think that individuals, individuals themselves are pretty important and they shouldn't just be cast aside because obviously you're believing that, you know, a God made the individual, maybe you believe, you know, man, woman, humans were made in the image of God, right?

So there's this, there's this deep kind of connection, almost this homology between this higher power and the, the the individual, the importance of the individual. And so that starts to kind of see a lot of that democratic thinking that everyone is equal. I mean, a lot of these religions have everyone being equal made in the image of God treating good. And that might not be true for all religions, of course.

But um this idea that, that, that the notion or the concept of democracy would come out of secular thinking doesn't really add up. And if you look throughout history, you look at the societies where it came from this is true.

And I think this is another example in that return to magic, you know, we kind of had this enlightenment narrative that that typically portrays scientists at the time, maybe even before they were considered scientists as, as almost breaking away from religion and, and, and taking a more objective approach to reality. But the history really tells a different story, right? That's not really what it is.

A lot of those people, whether it was the Isaac Newtons or a lot of the big names and signs were very religious. And they had this belief in a higher power. And that's not just, you know, they did, they didn't make the scientific progress despite that, they probably made the scientific process because of that progress because of that.

And so this is another example, you take a look at something like Greek um society, you know, Athens, specifically the the belief in the, in the many gods, the polytheistic religion, if you will um is is brought the importance to the individual helped frame their mind in terms of everybody being equal and helped usher in, you know, what we would consider a democracy, right? So the idea that democracy and secularism go together is patently false.

And that's something that John Ken talks about in his book, Democracy went through much experimentation, almost like a whack, a mole is, is the way I kind of think about it. Things kept, you know, popping up and you tried to, you'd put a system in place and something would work, but then that would cause another problem. So you try to squash that by putting another mechanism in place and then that would squash that.

And you saw this definitely in, in the uh you know, Athenian democracy where they were constantly experimenting with ways to not allow people to take advantage of democracies mechanisms to subvert it and to gain a control. So even though you've got this notion of trying to get good representation, trying to get a kind of equal voice to all the people. There's always ways that you can take advantage of it.

There's always gonna be something in the mechanism that you can try to latch onto and use it to gain power, whether that's, you know, spinning a narrative or using democratic language to do undemocratic things or something more specific about the levers that you can pull, you pull them in such a way to try to gain power. And of course, this has happened all throughout history. It still happens today.

It doesn't matter how kind of noble the cause or noble the mechanism is that's put forward to try to get good equal representation. There's gonna be something you could take advantage of in that to try to subvert it and gain control and, and, and man's want of control and want of power is, is, you know, kind of always there as a, you know, almost an an original sin if you will. And so there's that, that notion that you have to remember that.

Well, it's not surprising that there would be much experimentation in democracy, but as an ideal, right, as kind of this high level, maybe ultimately unreachable target, it, it forced a lot of societies to constantly take a look at what was working and what wasn't working and to constantly re experiment with the definition of democracy. And that's something that we're going to see throughout this episode. I'll be talking a lot about the constant experiments and reinventions that went on.

And it's a pretty interesting story. Um you know, in Greece, we saw a lot of uh attempts to, to, to, to achieve almost machine like pre uh sorry machine, like precision.

Um You had things like bronze axles and water clocks and ballot machines and, and carefully executed lots and you can kind of read the history of the different kind of mechanisms, sometimes literally mechanisms like literally tangible things like these axles and water clocks that were used to try to, you know, get representation almost guaranteed among the people of the society.

But, but that constant experimentation is because no matter what you put forward, there's gonna be pros and there's gonna be cons, you know, keep trying to kind of whack him all the cons out of it. And so we get this constant reinvention. So we usually think let's step back from that. A little bit and just think about the word de democracy, it's always kind of framed in this positive way.

Usually, you know, even if you're, you're kind of cynical about it and, and, you know, there's a lot of maybe uh BS narrative uh attached to a lot of it, we think of the ideal of democracy as being a very good thing and we tend to assume that that must have been the case throughout history. I mean, if so many societies have, you know, at least in modern history worked towards democracy, uh I guess everybody kind of thought it was a good thing, but that's actually not the case throughout history.

Democracy had many, many critics, in fact, democracy has had a bad, uh has had a bad reputation for most of its history, which is pretty interesting. Most of democracy's history, it had a bad reputation. OK. Um And, and the word kind of demo demo democrat, if you will have the opposite, meaning that it has today. In fact, all written commentaries on Athenian democracy were hostile to its novelty.

And, and, and what's interesting is that if you take a look at Athens again, right now, we're focusing on Athens, we'll, we'll, we'll spread that out to the other areas of influence across the world through time a bit later. But let's just focus on this kind of Athenian democracy right now. Athens produced no great theorist of democracy. It was kind of interesting right.

He said, well, democracy is, you know, supposedly came from Athens and they must have overly believed in it and it must have been this great thing. They had no theorist of democracy, nobody, like, like specifically writing about the, the theory and why it was good and why it should happen. Um And that would be kind of a surprising piece for many people if you look at the history of democracy. And so, while you can definitely say everyone agreed, it was a unique form of rule, right?

In, in stark contrast to uh you know, a very concentrated form of rule, you know, giving representation to the large body of people, to the whole populace is, is definitely different. It was still associated with the pursuit of selfish, selfish interests, right? It had these connotations of manipulation and trickery. Um And so, so democracy definitely had its, its many critics.

And again, that just goes back to the fact that you put something in place, I mean, look, it's kind of like, you know, almost mob rule, right? You, you come up with this new idea of how to give a lot of representation to people. But now you've got this idea like, well, you know what if the mob kind of just acts stupid. In fact, we saw in a previous episode, right? Talking about the delusions of crowds, right? Where um you know, you stand too close, it looks crazy.

The the this idea that you can have really bad outcomes when a lot of people get together and you can kind of get this mob uh decision making if you will of the group that that really has bad outcomes. And so that was already kind of perceived back in the day in Athens where a lot of people look down on this idea of just giving decision making, of course, they're not used to it, right?

I mean, this is an again stark contrast where you have this kind of singular, strong rule ruler, whether that's a monarchy or some other form of centralized power. And then someone comes along and says, well, hey, maybe we should just give the decision to the to the everyday Joe, right?

Um the average Joe, I mean, you've got a society where you, you, you think in terms of class, you think in terms of hierarchy, everyone has their place, you've got the people with the special concentrations of power and you got other kind of everyday people that just do the usual. You don't tend to think of giving power to the everyday person, right, to the, to the tailor, to the shoemaker, to the whatever.

So, so it was a unique form of rule undoubtedly, but um giving decision making to the mob if you will, as you know, as one way of thinking about it um already had baked into it, this idea that it could be manipulated, it could be full of trickery because you could appeal to the mob, right? And you could, you could end up with really bad outcomes and the pursuit of selfish interests could be baked in. So democracy had many critics, right from the beginning.

Another interesting aspect is that Athens rarely saw peace. So we typically think of democracy as being associated with peace. Well, at least on the surface, you might think that, right? I mean, uh compared to some other forms of government, if you want to have this uh society with, with, with good equal representation among the people, you're probably not deciding to go to war all the time necessarily.

Well, and, and, and you know, some people might have this kind of vision of Athens with the, you know, the philosophers peacefully sitting around, you know, the pillar is philosophizing, right? Well, Athens was at war on average every three years. In fact, Athens never had a 10 year run of peace. Athens never had a 10 year run of peace. So they're very much at war for much of its history.

And the main reason for being at war, as described by John Keynes was Hubris because Hubris got the better of the Athens leaders going back to this idea that, you know, you're going to want the there there's there's levers in place that you can now use to raise to, to, to, to raise yourself to power. But more specifically under democracy, they saw that you could not resist forcing democracy on surrounding lands. OK? And of course, we see some of that today as well.

You could not resist forcing democracy on surrounding lands. And of course, this is what happens when you think you have the best answer to everything. We've seen this with religions, we've seen this with other. When you think you have the moral high ground, you tend to think that this is obviously good for everybody which may or may not be true. But then you use that to kind of have uh the ends justify the means, right?

You, you will then partake in hegemony, you will take over, you will subjugate people and you will say, look, this is just for the best, even though it might hurt in the short run, you know, democracy is obviously good for people. And, and so we're going to essentially force it.

And so that's why Athens ended up seeing a lot of, of, of war and that, that hubris and the leaders to think that they had the best answer to everything and they wanted to uh you know, take over lands around it because his democracy is just good and, and you know, if other lands aren't doing what we're doing, that's gonna be friction anyway. So we need to spread our ideology around.

And so that kept Athens in a, in, in a spot of friction throughout much of its history, essentially all of its history, you know, the, the, the reality is throughout Greece and, and other areas of the world, many citizens were not willing or wanting to accept democracy. It was not seen as this great thing we did, we do, we don't want to have it forced down our throats. And so usually democracy had to spread by force.

Um You know, there's a good book called Who's Global Village called Who's Global Village by uh Ramesh Srinivasan and uh whose global village is really about this. Um You know, it's called rethinking how technology shapes our world. And it's kind of the internet version of what I just talked about where the internet gets invented and it's obviously good information wants to be free. You could connect everybody, you know, what could be wrong about that.

And, and so there's this kind of let's go give it to all the, all the other countries, especially, you know, developing countries that don't have something like connected internet.

I mean, we still see this today and I know like companies like Facebook have had these kind of mandates or what policies or they want to call them these missions to essentially go out and give, give the internet and give computers, give cheap laptops to, to people so they can, you know, contribute to the economy and all this and, and that's not to say that's all bad. I mean, there, there probably is some good things there but it's not just point blank face value good.

There, there could be so many downsides to that. So that, that kind of who, who's Global village by Ramesh Srinivasan talks about this idea that, you know, it's kind of the internet version where don't just assume it's all good and it needs to be shoved down in everyone else's throat. You know, because it's, it's, it's kind of like these Athens leaders. It's that hubris where you think you've got the moral high ground, you think, you know what's best for everybody.

And so you're just going to spread it everywhere as if there's as if there's not going to be some, some consequences to that and there will be. And so democracy then and now sees that, that narrative essentially play out, unfortunately. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. You might also think that if, if you've got this kind of rosy picture of democracy that Athens, you know, just kept going, right.

I mean, they came up with this great, supposedly came up with this great form of government and they have this good equal representation, obviously, the best way to run a country to run a civilization. So it must have just started and then been with us this whole time. Of course, that's not true. Athens fell, right? The, the, the end of the great experiment in uh you know, 338 BC backed by a gigantic army of 32,000 men.

You got Philip the second crushing the Democrats and their allies at the uh at the battle of Karan. Right, if you look throughout the history, um in, in bio to the northwest of Athens, you've got this massive battle in Athens Falls. That battle was, uh, you know, reportedly quite protracted and very vicious. You had more than 1000 Athenians fell, fall, sorry in battle. And uh and at least 2000 of them were taken prisoner.

So there's, there's all this kind of, you know, you've got Athens, you've got democracy, if you got friction and war for the most of its history and then of course, it ends in war itself with, uh you know, the, the, the Phillip, the second crushing it. Um, you know, that really allowed Philip to militarily um subjugate the whole of Peloponnese, right? And establish the, the Macedonian garrisons at, at many key points and, and there's that kind of whole history there.

So, you know, it's this question you stepping back from it all and thinking about democracy, you know, is this a dream or a nightmare? Right? I mean, we democracy does not have this unchecked flawless past. It's got a very checkered war torn hubris filled past where most citizens actually at the time did not think it was necessarily this great thing and it took a lot of time to, to, to become what it is today and not that today it's all great either.

I mean, there's, there's no lack of critics today either. In fact, it never really had a lack of critics but it's not all bad and we'll get, we'll get into, you know, a lot of the successes that democracy has had as well as, as we go through this episode. But, you know, that's the question, the ultimate question of something like democracy, which is, is, of course part of an even bigger ultimate question about, you know, how does society, how is it supposed to work?

How are we all supposed to get along? I mean, can it always, is, is it possible to create something that is frictionless or does, you know, must there be war, must there be friction whose village, right? Who's, who's democracy? Who's truth, whose morality, who's morals? You know, it's, uh it's, it's an age old question and, and I don't think there's ever a singular perfect answer to that. Maybe it's the best of the worst as per Churchill as we'll talk about in a bit.

But you know, that ultimate question, is this a dream or is this a nightmare or is it something kind of in between? But throughout history, it's really been all about power. You could argue, you know, historically, democracy can be viewed as legally sanctioned alternation in the exercise of power. If you, if you take a kind of that honest look of it, it's, it's this legally sanctioned alternation in the exercise of power. So, as opposed to it's almost like another way of trying to achieve power.

You know, it's, it, it doesn't look as great when you take this kind of dictatorship approach from the beginning. And you've got this, you know, obvious kind of subjugation of the people and they just kind of have to bow down. So if you kind of alter your language into a democratic language, which is going to sound much better and have aspects to it that gives better representation.

But in the end, if it's, if it's just kind of this legally sanctioned alternation in the exercise of power, you come out, you, you know, the question is, is democracy even better than, you know, something like a monarchy or some other forms of government that we'll take a look at even dictatorship. Um Later, we'll take a look at some of the consequences that we get from the mathematical modeling. Remember in the last episode, we took a look at mathematical models.

We are going to take a look at some of the modeling that you can do for democracy. And you can see that under certain situations like heavy, heavy crises and very tumultuous times that dictatorship is not necessarily worse than democracy. But in other times it can, you know, democracy can definitely be better. So we'll take a look at that. Now, of course, that's a mathematical model that's giving you that. So there's gonna be all kinds of naivete bak baked into that.

But anyways, we'll, we'll get to that. But for many observers throughout history, the little dream of democracy was more like a nightmare. You got, uh you know, Machiavelli kind of doing this comparison or this breakdown where he talks about, you know, you got monarchy and then that leads to tyranny and then that leads to aristocracy and then to oligarchy and then to democracy and then to anarchy and then I guess it can kind of start again and go over and over.

And so, you know, is democracy really just part of this, you know, overarching narrative, this overarching path that that societies take and it rises up for a bit, but then it will ultimately collapse because there's something more fundamental at work here. Is it trying to kind of fight against the original sin? Is it trying to fight against something that it just can't win against? So these are, these are just questions, right? That and that arise.

Um but you, but you got this idea that, you know, you've got one group temporarily ruling over other people and, and, and, and each group or person receives their turn or their fair share of power, but in the end, it still ends up just being all about power, right? And going back to Machiavelli, you know, Machiavelli between 14 69 and 15, 27 right?

You saw that, you know, for one reason or another, the rule of prince's monarchy, sooner or later, just degenerates into tyranny and tyranny is then replaced by the rule of aristocracy. Going to that path I was talking about that tends towards oligarchy and they've got popular struggles and they, they're, they're bent on overthrowing the rule by the few and, and they, and they clear the path to democracy and then you've got this, OK. Now, democracy, right?

Think about things like the French revolution which we'll talk about later. Um But any policy that is founded on the rule of the sovereign people quickly degenerates into anarchy and then that's a license that fuels the fire of political decadence. And, and so Machiavelli kind of talked about in that, in that form.

So you, you know whether that's a cycle or maybe it's a pendulum that swings back and forth and you've got the monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy and anarchy kind of different parts of that, that swing different aspects along the arc of the swing. However, you want to think about that. Now, I'm not saying it's any one of these specifically, but that these are the questions that have always been asked about democracy, right from the beginning.

OK. So we've got the most, we we've got most of the history of democracy and, and of Athens and that whole experiment that happened there is actually being looked at in a not so great way it's kind of frowned upon, it's talked about in this pejorative sense. So what happened? I mean, why do we talk about democracy? For the most part, it such a positive light, at least, even if it's not going, you know, as good as it could be as an ideal to work towards.

How did it become something that is seen as a good thing for civilizations? It's a good thing for societies to work towards. Well, a man by the name of George Groat who was this middle class Englishman banker, uh wrote something called the History of Greece, right around 18 50 or so.

And it was this very, you know, large piece of work where he took a look at democracy and the history, he took a look at Athens specifically and, and instead of the usual narrative up to that point, which was, it was kind of frowned upon and kind of leads to mob rule and, and, and, you know, the kind of subversion or perversion of, of, of something that seems good on the surface, but ends up being bad.

He looked at that and said, no, this is actually a really good thing, this is something to work towards and we should really repaint this in a positive light. And so his whole history of Greece really put forward this new narrative as democracy of showing democracy as something good. And so thanks to Groat's writing, Athens has become associated with the place that gave us, you know, a lot of history and theater and classical sculpture and other arts.

And of course, democratic government and, and that narrative gets, you know, from that point on further supported by, you know, can imagine things like travel agencies. And if you're, you know, from Athens and you want to bring a bunch of um you know, travel and tourism into, into where you are, you're going to help promote that narrative, you're gonna have movies made about it and documentaries.

And so there's lots of just kind of narrative around, you know, essentially Athens being the birthplace of Western civilization and, and definitely the birthplace of democracy and so much classical sculpture and arts and everything came out of that. Not that that's all wrong, but a lot of that is narrative and, and everything before Groats keep in mind was hardly a favorable view of Athen.

And so going back to this idea that, you know, uh a lot through most of history, you know, democracy, Athens was not seen as this great thing as almost a kind of this failed experiment. It sparked up for maybe a couple 100 years and then went down and, and, and lost itself to, to the frictions. You know, there, there's this real cost to democracy. This kind of downside you might say in that you really, you have to protect it.

There's this taming of military pressures that must occur at the borders of democracy in order to preserve it. It doesn't just spark up an existing vacuum and then grow from that point on, you know, you've got people at the borders who either don't like what you're doing or maybe they want to be a part of it.

You've got the fact that, um, you know, the hubris that we talked about previously that if you're, you know, a leader in democracy, you think that it is, you know, you have the moral high ground, you think everybody should be doing what you do. So you're gonna spread that to other geo uh political areas and, and the people there might not want it, they might frown upon it, but you're kind of forcing it down their throat.

You might actually use democratic language just to be in that region for a, you know, a different purpose you think of today and, and some of the resources as countries move into other areas and, and kind of, you know, subjugate or, or take over the different areas for resources, maybe it's oil or whatever it is, you know, they're using democratic language, but it might not really be for the purpose of spreading democracy, things like that.

So in order to survive and flourish, democracies must tame the political and military pressures on their borders. And the viability of any democracy appears to be inversely proportional to the quantity of outside geopolitical threats to its existence. May I say that again, the viability of any democracy appears through history to be inversely proportional to the quantity of outside geopolitical threats to its existence. So the more threats you have at that border, right.

The viability seems to, you know, you know, go down. Right. Um, but there's a gloomy corollary corollary here. Right? Is that democracy can kill itself off by misusing its mili military power on its neighbors. And so, you know, whether you're talking about people invading you or you're trying to invade them because you want to spread it. You know, democracy is not something that just lives in this clean vacuum.

There's a lot of friction there, there's, it's, there's a lot of pressure to try to keep the things survive. I don't think it's easy essentially to make. I, I think the take home message here is that democracy is not something that just, you know, once you start it kind of it, it's this natural outgrowth, right? It's, it's a, you, you should expect democracy to take root in any good forming society. And once it does, it's just going to continue to grow. That's really not what his history shows.

It's actually can be very difficult to preserve it. It can be very difficult to get democracy, one to take root, but also to make it, keep going, let alone grow. Ok. So um going back to this idea that it didn't all necessarily just come from Athens right? Before Greece, there were the Phoenicians, right, contact by mercantilism. So there's a strong evidence that the Phoenicians were ultimately responsible for introducing the culture of government by assembly into the Greek world.

I mean, keep in mind that when we talk about democracy in Greece, in Athens, specifically, um we're talking about uh more of a pure or a direct democracy where, you know, the, the leaders, if you will or the people that are supposed to represent, the public are chosen by sortition or by lot, essentially a lottery where you just kind of randomly sample from the population and you, you pick, you know, a few 100 or a few 1000 people and those are the leaders that are supposed to represent the public, which makes sense.

And like any, any type of random sample from a population, you assume the random sample is going to be more or less representative. Um if it's something like military leadership or uh you're in charge of, you know, the waterworks or something like that, you might be expected to obviously have some specific background, specific training. And so in that case, it wouldn't just be kind of a random lottery.

But by and large these assemblies that get created in this pure with a true democracy are essentially randomly sampled from the population uh drawn and, and that, and, and those people then it's, it's kind of like jury, right? You get called for jury duty and uh you know, it's, it's not that it's completely random, but, you know, essentially randomly sampled or drawn from the population, then you're expected to go do that duty.

Um So you've got Phoenicians that are actually responsible for introducing the culture of government by assembly into the Greek world. This is what John Key talks about. You've got tent dwelling tribes around 3000 BC that already had a rich vocabulary to describe the word assemblies. Um And if you look at a lot of these areas throughout the world, you, you've got uh in this area, you've got kings.

And you can say, well, even though there's a lot of mention of kings having dominated these regions during these times, the reality is that these kings were neither almighty, nor omnipresent despite Western pre prejudices uh would suggest, in other words, we kind of think especially in the West. Well, things like monarchy and kings and anything that would even smack of, of uh a concentration of power like that is really against the ideals of democracy, right?

But even in these places that had kings, those kings would benefit from having certain democratic aspects to their rule, from giving certain voices uh to, to individuals of the general public as a reason for kings to do that. It wasn't just some, you know, monarchy with that, that that was all powerful and kind of wielded the rules and, and, and that was that there's a benefit to having things like assemblies in certain areas and certain poet pockets over the regions in, in which you rule.

So before Greece, there were the Phoenicians there were these tw uh tent dwelling tribes all the way back to 3000 BC that had the vocabulary that talked about assemblies and even kings in the area had some assembly like aspects to it. There were some democratic aspects to it. How did the Phoenicians taste for assemblies get acquired in the first place?

Well, by contact with people uh who lived further to the east of the mountains of Syria Mesopotamia, by the Tigris and the Euphrates, many Syrian Mesopotamian cities actually had the buying and selling of products and a rich merchant lifestyle. So the the, you know, there's, there's kind of uh things that smack of democracy here, right?

There's, there's merchant lifestyles, there's products being traded and sold and, and, and, and bought, there's kings that are dipping into some of this assembly language. There's tribes that are getting into that. Uh uh you know, Phoenicians, there's a lot happening this area of the world beyond just Athens that really adds to the idea of what we consider democracy.

OK. Um Going back to this idea that it's not just this kind of secular division that moves you away from myth and magic that moves you away from, you know, religion, that's just not the case myth, ironically encourages things like group decision. And this is something that would surprise a lot of historians, right?

The gathering together to decide things had pagan and polytheistic roots if you actually look at the history, but that took a long time to make that realization because it seemed utterly improbable in a world ruled by myths, right? If you think about it, you've got, you know, the God or whatever is written in the book or the set of gods and they are the law, they are the rule. So it doesn't really make sense to gather a bunch of people together and say, can you help us make decisions? Right?

The, the the the decision is kind of already preordained or predestined. It's already written down, this is how we live our life. We don't need to gather the common man uh to, to kind of make that decision, but that's not the case, you know, the pagan and polytheistic roots. Uh There, there are, there are pagan and polytheistic roots and religious roots to the gathering together to make decisions. And so it took a while for historians to actually realize that.

And II, I again goes against this narrative that, you know, democracy or assembly, you know, giving represent representation to the everyday person is something that's, you know, um the antithesis of religion or something that goes against myth, uh you know, or, or, or the belief in something supernatural, that's just not the case. And why is that, I mean, myths provided a mental kind of categories. They, they provided mental categories that shape structured and energized people's lives.

You know, myth provided a map that located people's position in space and time it was their anchor. We talked about how that has a way of actually moving importance to the individual and, and, and how it makes sense to do things like assembly and give voice to the everyday man. So it's interesting that again, we're, we're kind of playing against some of the common narratives that we hear that that democracy is supposed to be kind of the opposite of that. It's just not the case.

So what happened to these ancient democracies? I mean, I was talking earlier about how Athens, you, you got it kind of spark it up and goes for a couple of 100 years and all of a sudden it, it dies out. We got the fall of Athens, right? And so that, that goes against this idea that, well, you know, once democracy starts, it's kind of natural and it just takes off almost like wildfire, right? Because everybody should be doing democracy.

It seems to be like a natural thing that humans do if they're given the freedom that they deserve, you know, democracy will take root and it will, will flourish, it will grow from there and on and on. But, but we saw that that wasn't actually the case with Athens. No, not, not only was it frowned upon, but it didn't, you know, didn't actually last that long. It was throughout most of history seen as essentially a failed experiment. But what about all these other ancient democracies?

You know, we talked about the Phoenicians, the tent dwelling tribes around 3000 BCE. Um, you know, what happened to these other ancient democracies? Well, did they say, did they simply fizzle out and die? No, uh popular assemblies not only survived but a lot of cases, they actually grew stronger. So, you've got these pockets of these different, you know, whether it's tribes or uh groups of people, you know, as small as civilizations or, or societies rather.

And they've, they've got aspects of, of democracy to them and they're not just fizzling out and dying in some places, they actually grow stronger and stronger. You've got long distance empires of the Babylonian and a Syrian type that could only function effectively when they outsourced their power. And they did this by developing contractual agreements and cultivating working relations with pastoral tribes and cities that dotted their territory, territorial domains.

In other words, it's not that you had all these societies that had to kind of just do their own thing and fight anybody that was at their borders. Sometimes in order to survive, you had to really get along, you had to cooperate and that starts to smack of democracy that starts to smack of, you know, some of these things that, that uh you know, you've got to get people working together, you got to give voices, not just to those in, in absolute power and on and on.

And so that is kind of what helped a lot of these damn ancient democracies if you will um flourish. So did they all just fizzle out and die? No, especially considering you might think so. Right. Because if you think that considering that, you know, we know that there was growth of empires in the region, so the empires were still growing, you know, but does that mean that all these empires were singular leaders strangled to death? Democracy?

No, no, it's just not what we see for the reasons that I just give. Ok, so we don't have a situation where these democracies are just fizzling out and dying. We've got a lot of contribution coming from a lot of different places. In fact, as John Ken describes in his book, Islam has vital contributions that have been made to democracy, which might come as a surprise to many. But Islam had vital contributions.

So you got this kind of idea maybe in the West, that democracy had disappeared for, you know, 1000 years before it was restarted again by things like, you know, American revolutions and French revolutions. And that would kind of just disappeared after, you know, the, the kind of Greek experiment for 1000 years and then came back. But that idea is actually pretty problematic. It's, it's that there's evidence that vital contributions to democracy came from Islam.

So democracy, as we know, it is not a, a, you know, a single minded invention of Athenians or Greeks or the Phoenicians or the Ancient Greek, Syrian Mesopotamians, right? And so John Key says that the early history of assembly based democracy instead, he says resembles a vast euphrates fed by many different streams of influence, so to speak, right? So the connections between its deltas and upstream sources are complicated. So much more complicated than previous accounts have supposed.

It's actually better to say that the democratic, democratic ideals and institutions were born and first nurtured within the quadrangle of territory bounded by the cities east of Athens and Rome in the west and Babylon and Mecca in the east. OK. So again, those democratic ideals and institute institutions were born and first nurtured within that quadrangle, Athens, Rome, Babylon and Mecca in the East. You've got some, some, some some vital contributions from Islam as well.

And it's not just assemblies and, and kind of language of democracy that, that, that exists. It some simple mechanisms that exist throughout the world other than Athens. We also have the idea of parliaments which is typically taught to us as being kind of a British invention. But actually the first parliament, which is of course, a representative institution came from the Christian Monarch King Alfonso the ninth of Lyon, which is Spain.

OK. And that came from the realization that effective government required the creation of a new mechanism for resolving disputes. So beyond just this idea of, you know, representative, you know, adding representation to the everyday person, you've got this idea of forming institutions to really help with that process, really moving us towards what we would now call representative democracy, right?

So regional assemblies, independent judiciaries, territorial, territorial defined states, church councils petitions and covenants proved to be decisive inventions. And we saw that coming out of Spain. So the first parliament was not developed during the Ottoman Empire or a gift from the British, right? As often is heard, uh it's, it's really a brainchild of the self-interest Christian monarch, King Alfonzo the ninth of Leon. So you can go read about that.

Um you know, in, in, in the history to kind of see how that was was born out of his need to basically work with surrounding areas. And there's a kind of a really interesting story of developing these institutions to kind of help him hold on to his power. Um Alfonzo was bent on building up his realm, right? The creation of a political animal.

He saw that the effective government required the creation of a new mechanism for resolving disputes and striking bargains among interested parties who felt they had a common interest in reaching compromise. So avoiding violence and John key talks about this should also be noted that the invention of parliament in Europe, although definitely historical importance right there.

So this this this European contribution, this usual kind of narrative is, is is historically important, specifically, you know, as a gift from Britain, let's say, um with respect to representative democracy, but it wasn't always the epicenter of things or even, even if you think parliament kind of came from the usual narrative. It wasn't the epicenter of things.

Many times, decisive action took place elsewhere right away from, from these institutions, untold numbers of otherwise unconnected events and characters and movements and organization. They all kind of join hands in creating institutions of representative democracy often without having that intended consequence. You know, I've talked about indirect targets in the past, right?

So it's not like somebody who was set out to necessarily form these representative institutions, they may have been doing a lot of different things for a lot of different reasons, different organizations and movements, people joining hands for political reasons, they end up kind of as a byproduct creating these institutions of representative democracy to make those activities be more effective, right?

And so, and so representative institutions were also shaped by non forces uh after being transplanted across oceans. OK.

So again, you know, the sources of where things come from when we think of democracy is, is far more interesting and uh and convoluted if you will than the usual narrative goes, we also have this idea of trial by jury, of course, jury is, is, you know, kind of similar to sortition or selection by law, you're essentially kind of doing a lottery to randomly select from a population and put those people as representatives to go make decisions and, and that and this is really done to, to check, put a check on arbitrary exercise of power, right.

So medieval Christianity is where this comes from originally, they needed the mechanism to prevent the abuse of power by their leaders who were, you know, seem to treat their office as if it was their own. So you'd have Christian leaders who would obviously originally go in there, presumably for the right reason.

But like we've talked about for other um you know, aspects of uh for example, the Athens democracy, you have people who have the levers to pull and then they pull those to subvert the process and they, you know, hubris kind of takes over and then they end up doing things for the wrong reasons. So medieval Christianity struggled with uh with this as well. And uh and they wanted a mechanism to prevent the abuse of power. And this is actually where trial by jury comes from.

So the solution was to prevent governments from meddling with church affairs because a lot of that kind of rise to power would be when the church and the government worked together too closely. And so this, this is what it led to known by uh what is now known as trial by jury. Um Again, trial by jury is just the the the the participation, the participation of citizen representatives in juries in public courts of law, right? Just as we see in democracy such as Canada and the United States.

And, and this is seen as a vital way to check arbitrary exercise of power by governments. Um Jury service came from spiritual struggles of medieval Christianity against earthly monarchs, came from spiritual struggles of medieval Christianity against the earthly monarch. So again, you've got the spiritual side of things, you've got the power struggle side of things.

You need mechanisms in place to try to put a check on that, to try to be closer to what the in this case, Christian ideals were, right? You, you, you've got this belief in this, in this kind of higher power and the reach is always beyond the grasp. And you need to somehow ensure that, you know, sinful humans can, can approach that target as, as as well as possible. And so these mechanisms are put in place to try to achieve that.

I think that's a good way of thinking about how a lot of these assembly based, you know, mechanisms like trial by jury come come to be um one of the ironies in the history of representative democracy is that jury service was passed on to us from the spiritual struggles, right? Like I just said of medieval Christianity against the earthly monarch.

So that's really, really kind of goes back to that indirect target piece, the fact that you're putting things in place, not necessarily because, you know, it's, it's, it's well, we need representation or we need a better form of government or we're doing it purely for the government's sake. It could be because we're trying to get closer to God or we're trying to um do things for social, economic reasons and this mechanism might help with that and, and on. No like that.

So, so that's where we get the trial by jury. Um, the printing press, which comes up a lot, right. When you talk, you know, we talk about this in the Immortal Library episode. And I think a few other episodes, you know, as soon as information is, is kind of set free or moved in that direction, there's obviously uh ideologies tend to take off from there. The word spreads, people understand what's possible.

Uh You know, you got Martin Luther who is writing a new book, apparently every two weeks, you've got Knox and the Protestant reformation, they're all kind of mixed into this, you know, the importance of the individual. Uh you know, the freedom of man. Uh Milton was writing at a time of, of high religious flux, you would say, uh and a lot of political upheaval. And so he was at the time writing against the dangers of censorship.

And, and so there's, there's characters that are coming into this, that, you know, they're good writers, um good speakers, really getting the message out there and things start to take off like wildfire.

And of course, that's important because it once the general public beyond just the leaders, once the general public gets wind of new forms of, you know, democracies or governments that are help happening elsewhere that are different than the monarch rule or different than some kind of centralized power. You know, that starts to see the potential for, you know, revolutions going forward, which we'll talk about uh in a bed.

You also have the covenants, right, religion as catalyst to civil resistance to government. So we can think of religion now as kind of being. And you see this in a number of places as really the catalyst that help uh a lot of the revolutions begin in the first place. A lot of the civil resistance to the governments at the time, um you know, duties as church members towards God and their fellow believers are uh outlined as as well.

So if you think about what a covenant is, right, these are the duties of the church members towards God and and and their fellow believers. It's a promise to engage, refrain from uh you know, or refrain from a specified action. So there were some local factors that help explain the invention of civilian resistance to government with respect to what I just said there, such as the poverty of the Scottish lands, the outbreak of the 30 years war in 16 18.

And the fact that King Charles the first married a French Catholic Henrietta Maria, but it was religion that proved to be the most vital catalyst in the invention of civil resistance. Um You know, you've got that as a Scottish invention, the Protestants, the Calvinists, they created covenants to protect themselves from papal authority, right?

So the invention of covenants in Scotland, for example, demonstrated yet again within the history of democracy that, you know, the raw, blind, passionate conviction that God is the source of all things. Uh humans could spark the the levelheaded demand of mortals to reign in earthly rulers who saw themselves as divine. And John Ken talks about this.

So again, it's like you've got this belief in the higher power, there's a better way there, there's this kind of more ideal way to live life, but you need mechanisms in place to make that happen. And so that's where a lot of this um you know, that this idea of getting better representation, pushing up against the government, civil resistance because it actually goes against what we believe.

So you've got this, this kind of strong religious catalyst to a lot of the civil unrest and, and eventually resistance. Uh and, and, and push towards more democratic ideals. Um You've got uprising in the low countries and, and so now we're getting into, you know, a lot of what's happening, you know, throughout Europe, throughout England. Uh a lot, you know, democracy popping up and down, a lot of fits and starts.

You've got that dispersed literature coming out from the printing press, it really sounded the trumpet call for many others to to muster behind this new form of government, which is apparently possible and apparently has a lot of benefits and apparently it works in certain places. Uh, you know, this is what Milton was calling the commonwealth, right.

And, and, uh, you've got Milton writing his aria, which again, you know, was really kind of goes into the details of, of how he's opposing licensing and censorship. So you've got this uprising in all these different lo you know, again, it's not, you know, centralized to like, you know, a specific part of, of Britain or, or a specific part of Europe, necessarily, you've got these different places, different writers, the spread of information, people getting motivated.

You've got the religious undertones of the civil unrest. OK? It's, it's like percolation, right? It's coming from all these different places and starting to kind of emerge into something which we know will eventually lead to certain revolutions to really spark the whole thing off.

Um So uh you've got these pamphlets where, where people are starting again, continuing with this writing where people are writing about democracy as a desirable type of government pamphlets were written to declare no envoy, the authority of Phillip the second in Spain. OK. So you got people writing against the monarchy. So he's feeling the pressure.

Uh you know, one that was written in 15 83 by an unknown Dutch author was the first to truly defend democracy as a desirable type of government based on popularly elective elected representatives, you know, based on popular elected elected representatives. So you've got, again, going back to these kind of two types of democracy.

You got the direct pure democracy where you're not electing the representatives, you're doing that by sortition, you're just basically taking a random sample from the population using those as the representation for the rest of the population.

And then you've got representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy, representative democracies where you actually get into these elections and you, you elect um um you, you, you, you elect people to uh you know, defend and, and, and talk in a way that, that resonates with what you believe in.

OK. So, so this, this one of the pamphlets, they don't know the author, but a Dutch in 15 83 was the first to truly defend democracy as, as a desirable type of government based on popularly elected representatives. And this is the first time in modern Europe where the word democracy was actually used in a positive way. OK. Um Again, you've got groat back in the day doing his writing. Um But this actually we, we're jumping around the timelines a little bit, right?

Because this is back in 15 83 growth came later in the 18 fifties. Um So we could say that really in Europe using the word democracy in any kind of positive way it came from from the pamphlets. And you've got the printing press and uh and you got some uprising in the, in the, in the low countries. And then we got the execution of Charles the first in 16 49 which you think of as the official end of monarchy in Europe, right? So you can go read all about that.

Um Although there was some backlash that happened due to the cult of martyrdom. So you, you, you which can happen, right? You, you kill off a big leader, you get the martyrdom that kind of comes in and get a little bit of backlash. Maybe, maybe monarchy is not so bad, maybe we want it. But ultimately, this, this ushered in a new era of representational government in Europe.

OK. So again, you've got that direct democracy from Athens, all these upstarts, you know, Phoenicians and tent dwelling tribes and 3000 BC, you got Syrian Mesopotamia area, you've got the Islam contributions and then you've got all this writing and the printing press and you've got this whole kind of percolation all across the, you know Europe and, and elsewhere.

And, and then you've got this execution of Charles the first in 16 49 which is really kind of ultimately ushering in this new era of representational government in Europe. We should be electing people that, that, that speak for us that represent for the, represent the people of the population. OK? And so what I wanna do now is move into the American century, OK?

Where, where everything kind of suddenly swings westward and, and this is obviously kind of the seeds of a lot of the narrative that we hear about nowadays. But what democracy is typically, when you think, you know, where has de democracy really taken off and who did a lot of the building with respect to, to promoting it? Um You typically think of the United States, right? But obviously um other areas of Europe as well. But I want to focus on uh the American continent.

You know, we'll talk about South America, we'll talk about the United States of America. We'll talk about Canada um focus a lot on the US, obviously, but you can think of this as the American century and that's what John Key talks uh calls it in his book, The American Century. So we suddenly swing westwards. We got the execution of Charles the first that, that really fortified Europe's reputation as the home country of representative democracy, right? That this is where things are seeing.

But Europe now has the reputation uh as as kind of being the birthplace of office holding and parliaments and liberty of the press and, and government by consent of the people. But towards the end of the 18th century, without warning, the action suddenly swung westwards. Ok. So it's swinging away from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean towards bustling towns like Boston and Charleston and Philadelphia.

Uh the the the swing of the compass made its way to the United States of America, which was now the new center of gravity of democracy in the world. And it spawned the proud local belief that the upheaval of 17 76 was the first modern Democratic revolution. We challenge that a little bit. OK. But we know that story. Um And so we've got this kind of, you know, the musket shots in 17 76 declaring independence from England, right?

The story goes that democracy in the new world began with those musket shots in 17 76 when the local colonist declared their independence from the mother country. No part, no, no, no longer part of Britain, no longer part of England got our own thing going. 17 76 musket shots fired, right? And, and here we are, and this is America, um the formation of Democratic Republican Party and the basic principles of the institutions of American government.

So you have this being led by Thomas Jefferson, which was, uh you know, of course, in opposition to the federalist dominated uh uh by Alexander Hamilton, right? Um which is a name that we've heard much more recently because of the musical. Um Jefferson gained full control in 18 01 and gave the inaugural address which is seen as a statement of democratic principles and universally accepted today as the basic principles of the institutions of American government, right?

Um But it's kind of interesting that even those founders and even some of those original people uh that were putting a lot of this together were not necessarily so keen on democracy. They're trying to figure out what to do with the country. They're obviously getting away from the British rule. They're trying to get away from monarchies, but that doesn't mean that they were super keen on democracy. And John Key talks about this.

He says, you know, the truth is that the story of 17 76 reveals a simple fact that the Republican gentleman who championed the Philadelphia model of government, regardless of their political views and a wide range of issues were not keen on democracy in any sense. It was indeed a remarkable innovation.

The Philadelphia model of Republican government, a two tier Federated system of state power that was designed to dispense with the trappings of monarchy by you know, striking a balance balance of power between the President Congress and the sup uh the the Supreme Court.

But the founders like Madison believe democracy was a form of small scale uh government by a majority of uncouth commoners, a species of class rule in which the interests of the many and the confusion of the multitude swallowed up the higher concerns of the few. So democracy was not necessarily seen even in the West, even in the US as, as this great thing that should be. Um you know, put in place, there were a lot of problems with it.

There's probably still a lot of this idea that whatever happened in Athens was kind of a failed experiment. We saw a lot of the unrest and, and kind of some of the mob rule that was happening across Europe. And even this, this kind of the, the expression, you know, quote unquote, we the people which of course is in the first line of the constitution can really be taken to mean we the elected and distinguished representatives of the people.

OK. So this is what, and I'm sure this is somewhat controversial, but this is what John King is saying in, in, in the book Life and Death of Democracy. That, that, that expression we the people does not necessarily mean, you know, the everyday person, the the population II I it it probably means we the elected and distinguished representatives of the people. OK. So you've still got kind of this power struggle, you've got these levers of a mechanism that you can pull for the wrong reasons.

And that doesn't mean the people doing it think is necessarily wrong or you know that they're evil, they're trying to do what they think is right. But it does not necessarily mean, you know, yeah, we really want that pure democracy. We want to be able to just give it out to, you know, get, get that decision making being made by, by having strong representation across everybody in the country.

And of course, we've got history in the US of slavery and all kinds of things that went against, you know, the women suffrage uh uh or, or, or the inability of women to vote rather, you know, going against this idea that everybody is equal and, and on and on. So we, we, we'll get into some of that. So, you know, specifically with respect to democracy and slavery.

OK. So you've got Toqueville who was the first writer to show that representative democracy could not live with slavery as classical assembly based democracy had managed to do. OK. So the Greek experiment, everything that was going on in Athens, they still had slaves and uh and they, and they still, you know, had predominantly male dominated representation. So that direct democracy leaves out a lot of things that um really speaks to everybody being equal, right?

Uh But, but in the United States as well to was the first way to show that again that representative democracy could not live with slavery. So you've got the strong social uh social opposition starting to, to, to go against that whole narrative um admittedly with some discomfort, right? Because not everybody agreed at the time, slavery really posed new questions that had been skillfully organized out of party politics during the uh you know, the Jacksonian episodes of democracy in America.

Um The anti-slavery movement was really a social opposition on a grand scale. It included cooperation with anti-slavery protesters along the Atlantic, including women. OK. So, you know, for example, at the at, at the, the federal convention, for instance, uh Madison encouraged quashing the subject matter altogether, right? This is why the new constitution was silent about slavery. It also had to do with the fact that a Senate was created in which the States were represented.

And, and this had a way of guaranteeing that slavery in the South would be untouchable simply because until the middle of the 19th century, it commanded a majority of votes in the upper chamber.

So if you kind of look at the way the government was structured out, you can see that they were able to still put this constitution together without saying anything about slavery, they can still talk about, you know, we the people, they can still talk about representation and everyone being equal and yet still have something like slavery in place.

Um On the side of the abolitionists were many southerners, in fact, 4/5 4 5th of the members of the 130 abolition societies established before 18 27 actually lived there. Um And this brought women together on an unprecedented scale. You know, you've got the daughter of a wealthy slave owning judge from Charleston, Miss Angelina Grimy. Angelina Grimy, go look her up. It's interesting history there.

She left that kind of obviously slave owning life of her, of her family, uh moved us to Philadelphia and began writing. Here we go with the writing again, right? For the most famous abolitionist newspaper at the time called the Liberator. And her first pamphlet was titled an appeal to the Christian Women of the South, written in 18 36 where she denounced slavery as unchristian.

So, so you've actually got the opposition to slavery and you've got, you know, women's rights kind of coming together because in some sense, as John King talked about, you know, the the the struggles that women were going through at the time is also a type of slavery, right? Their, their rights were just very, very suppressed, they didn't have a voice, right? Um And so there's that kind of whole intertwining all coming together in the grand social opposition to slavery in general.

And this, of course, brings us to the Civil War, which you can think of as the first war between aspiring representative democracies, right? You got these political elites who are prone to think of themselves as defenders of these two incompatible definitions of democracy. Civil War, of course, saw an estimated 970,000 casualties. 3% of the total population of the United States died 620,000 soldiers. Two thirds of those from disease.

OK. Uh died the the war ruled out a return to, to what you know, they call the the status quo antebellum. OK. Status quo antebellum, which is uh a Latin phrase which means the situation as it existed before the war. So that term was originally used, you know, in treaties to refer to the withdrawal of enemy troops and the restoration of pre-war leadership. Uh you know, when it was used as such, it means that no side gained or lost any territorial economic or political rights.

Ok. Um The Federation was restored and that was of course led by Abraham Lincoln the Civil War, you know, split the Democratic Party which symbolically was a good thing because it helped smash the public identification of slavery with democracy, the victory freed 4 million slaves. And and really just, you know, sharpen the democratic sentiments destroyed old customs and institutions that were based on slavery.

And of course, we got three major amendments to the constitution that resulted from all this one, the outlawing of slavery, two, the extension of federal legal protection to all citizens, regardless of the race. And three, the abolition of racial discrimination in voting. So Civil War as a major push obviously against slavery and, and toward better democratic ideals where all people are truly equal. You've got government by party competition.

So now we start to think, you know, you've got the Republicans that had a monopoly on the presidency between 18 72 and 1912. That was actually only broken twice by um Grover Cleveland's victories in 18 84 and 18 92. Uh But the Democrats also had their fair share of office during the same period. Uh you know, they won sizable majorities in the House of Representatives. Uh in about, you know, seven out of 10 or definitely seven out of 10 congressional elections.

Government by party competition was a bold first in the history of representative democracy. But it's kind of interesting and John, he talks about this, how the parties were actually run like bus like like big business. So again, you've got, you know, there's something good about this and let's get representation. Let's have different parties. Maybe there's some comp obviously competition between the parties, maybe that competition is good.

But then you've got the parties, again, they've got levers to poll and they've got people who want power and they start to run themselves. Like big business parties were actually more like employers. They employ thousands of people. Party workers were described um by uh a Russian political scientist, Goski as uh when he was visiting the US as quote unquote, party bosses were like mob bosses.

Ok. And uh and if we just actually gonna read some excerpts here because I thought this was kind of interesting right out of uh uh of John Ken's book, The Party Boss, quote unquote men who are rarely re remembered today. Figures like George. Hi in California. Tom Platt in New York. Matt Quay in Pennsylvania was a new type of political animal dubbed with the Dutch word Boss. Baas. Uh that was commonly used in New York as a term of respect for a master or employer or chief.

The boss was an avowed democrat certainly. But he was also an uns sleeping devious, ruthless manipulator. A leader feared as much as respected because of his audacious strength of will, cleverness and large purse. In an age of ever bigger organizations, he resembled a general in charge of an army on the battlefield of elections which were those moments when parties clashed openly using uh Rasta rather than rifles, paper stones rather than bullets.

An American election campaign was a great show to the hold as the hero of jewels verns around the world in 80 days discovered shortly after arriving in San Francisco. Um So you can kind of see the description of how these party bosses were. We wouldn't normally think of that today necessarily.

Although maybe in some sense, um you've got that, you know, following the, you know, the, the Russian political scientist that I was talking about Ostrosky, uh you know, he was really trying to capture the ways in which party workers resembled a cross between a feudal lord as he was speaking a capitalist employer and a modern Christian missionary.

Ok. There's a notice striking description of the figure of the heart of of the ward healer precinct captain, county chairman, state assemblyman and congressman and the state boss. And he says to this one, he lends a dollar for another. He obtains a railroad ticket without payment. He has coal distributed in the depth of winter. He makes other gifts in kind. He sometimes sends poultry at Christmas time, he buys medicine for a sick person.

He helps to bury the dead by procuring a coffin on credit or half price. He has a kind heart and virtue of his position and his position gives him the means of satisfying his need for kindness. The money which he distributes comes from the chest of the machine. The latter has obtained it by the most reprehensible methods. But but but no matter uh you know, with his money, he can also dispense an ample hospitality in the drinking saloons.

Uh at uh as soon as he comes in, friends, known and unknown, gather around him and he treats everybody. He orders one drink after another for the company. He is the only one who does not drink. He is on duty, yada, yada.

So these, these kind of interesting ex excerpts right out of the, of John King's book there, you know, it is kind of like a mob the way it's being described, you know, you've got money that's probably coming from not good means, but then you're using that money to also kind of help people the everyday person in society. And so it's a, it's a much different dynamic than you might think today.

Although maybe there are more similarities uh that I'm saying, um you've got this notion of bulling your way to the top. OK. So we've got the parties, you know, if, if this is post civil war, uh you've got George Washington's view, that party government was alternative despotism. So again, these are not all favorable views. It's not like founders got together, they all had the same ideals and everybody knew what they were doing and they were going to write it down.

And this is, you know, you've got these, these, these poor views of democracy. You've got, uh, you know, George Washington viewing party government as, as essentially alternative despotism where, you know, you got one faction over another.

Uh you know, that of course, was then scoffed at by the American Democrats because they believed the party less democracy was a contradiction in terms, you know, many Americans ended up believing that parties and their bosses were just a prettier version of the despotism that occurred elsewhere in the world and parties just really bullied support from both candidates and supporters. OK? And then you've got this kind of link between empire and democracy.

And so this, remember we were talking about, you know, the hubris in Athens is as you start to have these democratic ideals and you think you have the moral high ground, then you're gonna start to spread that everywhere else. And that comes with all kinds of friction, all kinds of war. Uh You know, this, this avoiding imperial domination via isolation.

So if you think about the United States who are isolated, uh you know, before globalization, obviously, the American Republic managed its affairs with no general foreign policy. Other than George Washington's strict determination to avoid confrontation. OK. Compare that to today, right? Uh The, the young republic was a disinterested power. It was both amateurish and anti imperialist.

The American people took advantage of their geographical isolation to fulfill their own political destiny, protected by the distant British warships. So they got the warships in Britain. They still got that protection, but they're isolated. They're not interested in war. Leave us alone. We're doing our own thing. This kind of anti imperialist viewpoint, compare that to today, America's noble innocence and splendid isolation were eventually to be disturbed, right?

So most historians of American democracy have preferred to ignore the link between em em uh empire and democracy. Right? Going back to this idea that we're going against the narrative they take for granted that American democracy was untouched by the allure of imperial domination until at least the end of the 19th century um by the rough scramble of colonies and profits led by Britain France, Germany, Russia.

You know, so when you talk about uh America's noble innocence and splendid isolation were eventually disturbed, you've got this kind of rough scramble for colonies and profits, right? Britain, France, Germany, Russia, other other other parts of Europe. So in other words, their nice geographic isolation begins to get disturbed democracy and its ideals can no longer grow in this nice pretty vacuum and uh friction results.

And then you've got this idea of the curse of proclaimed innocence that the the the the fact that your isolation is actually choking off criticism. So even if you can remain isolated for a while, you start to just like an echo chamber, you start to get kind of that confirmation bias. You get that cognitive dissonance that we talked about before you start to get all these biases baked in and they can't get corrected, they can't get checked by any outside influence or source.

So that proclaimed innocence is a curse for democracies. It chokes off criticism of its own illusions until it becomes unprotected and vulnerable, right? And, and John Key written, you know, writes in his book. It's it, it is ashamed of nothing and acts righteously, apparently afraid of nothing until such time as it finds itself naked, unprotected and vulnerable to the ways of the world. So eventually the ways of the world catch up to you and that proclaimed innocence can actually be a curse.

And so now we're moving into this expansion and meddling aspect of the United States. So now we've got really, you know, the most powerful democracy on the planet. You know, let's start moving into, you know, late 19th or earliest 20th century.

Um You got America expanding West laying waste, obviously to many native Americans, you've got dispatch naval forces to uh Buenos Aires and Chile in 18 90 91 you got, you know, the Americans leading a full scale Cuban intervention, they occupied Puerto Rico they invaded Central and Latin America 20 times between 18 90 1910, they returned another 19 times between 1910 and 1945 and yet another 20 times from 1945 until 2004, you've got 59 military interventions in just over a century.

So we go from this, you know, anti imperialist, uh you know, isolated, geographically cut off area that just wants to kind of do their own thing and they're not interested in other world affairs. They don't even have a foreign policy other than just not getting into war to 59 military interventions in just over a century.

And I think this is what we have to uh acknowledge when it comes to things like democracy where uh you know, one you have to now, now there's two ways to think of this, of course, is you're trying to protect something that's really important to your country. So there's this idea of deterrence, right? Where maybe you're doing those interventions because you want to deter other countries from, from, from getting too powerful, who have a different form of government and maybe challenging it.

Uh Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. The other side of that is you use is maybe you just want to spread democracy and you want to, you see that as, you know, kind of the same thing as deterrence, but you want to keep yourself safe. So if you can spread your democratic ideology to more countries. Then the, the people at your borders are, of course not as dangerous.

And then of course, you've got kind of the third angle where maybe you're just using democratic language to go find resources or something. So you, you, you talk as though you're doing everyone a, a good thing by bringing, you know, democracy to their country, but maybe they also have oil and that whole side of things. Uh And so you've kind of got this mix of reasons, you know, mixed with the hubris, mixed with, you know, taking the moral high ground that can just lead to a lot of intervention.

So again, it's not that the ideals weren't there at the beginning, not to go to war, just build our own democracy. But you can see where it ends up. Um I've read an excerpt from the book. Um The length of occupation varied from days to years and the range of interests perceived by the Americans to be at stake was very broad. Indeed, force was directed at a revolt led by black workers against American claims upon Haiti's Nevas Island trade unionists were sometimes the target of occupation.

So Guatemala 1920 Panama, 1925 troops and ships were used several times to repel threats to American interests posed by Mexican nationalists.

1914 to 1916, in a number of countries, troops were sent to shape or reshape the outcomes or aftermaths of elections as happened in Cuba in 19 06 to 19 09, several times in Panama, 19 08, 1912, uh 1918 to 1920 twice in Honduras 1919 and then 1924 to 1925 interventions were also commonly directed at securing investments or seizing resources as in the Dominican Republic in 19 03 to 19 04, you know, the dollar, the quote unquote dollar diplomacy, uh protectorate set up by Nicaragua in 19 07 in two interventions in Honduras 1911, 1912 and in the extended occupation of Cuba between 1917 and 1933.

So quite the contrast from geographic isolation and no foreign policies to just massive amounts of intervention, you know, and you can question about whether or not this is what democracy demands, but maybe other forms of government demand it in a different way. But something that is about peace and representation, giving voice to the people. Getting away from concentrated power, getting away from monarchies is not getting you away from war is not getting you away from the friction.

OK. So, so, so pretty interesting conversation and debates around that. Um Let's move south to Spanish America, which is also really, really interesting, a lot of experiments in democracy happening in Spanish America. Um You've got these coils which are these kind of homegrown elites who were using a lot of democratic language to really see power. Uh and control in a more concentrated fashion.

It's kind of an unfortunate version of, you know, the the democratic ideals were there and you had some good experiments and you had a lot of healthy things and then inevitably the levers were presented and people subverted that mechanism to gain control. And so you see that with these coils, uh the seas of democracy were also germinated in Spanish America. You have homegrown elites who mastered the art of using stripped down forms of representative government to essentially get their way.

Their authority was propped up by a written constitution in public elections. It was backed by force of arms.

OK. So you've got these elites that sided with representative government, not because of some heartfelt textbook commitment to the principles and practice of power sharing, you know, and, and public accountability or publicly accountable government and, and you know, political inequality rather their principle, these cards, uh their, their principal motive for writing constitutions and embracing elections was because it was the best type of government that enables superior men to rule.

OK. So the the, you know, South America uh Spanish America at the time, right? Uh as we would call it democracy rather the the read, read it again. The principal motive for writing constitutions and embracing elections was because it was the best type of government that enables superior men to rule. So you've got this whole other reason, this whole other narrative coming out of why democracies were started to begin with.

So in other words, uh you know, inequalities of social wealth and power were best sealed by government based on representation. OK. Different side of things. You got roses as, as kind of a quintessential um Colo in 18 41 you can go read about him. Um It's not that you didn't have a, you know, some promise in Spanish America, you did. Uh there were some promising upstarts to genuine democracy. You had the Uruguay experiment slash laboratory, go read about that. That's, that's quite interesting.

Uruguay really um when it comes to Spanish America, setting the precedent to, to have the uprising to have the democracy in place. You know, but you've got World War Two, you got the collapse of Wall Street in 1929. It really just had drastic consequences on democracy in Spanish America. And ultimately the CALOS took power. Uh Once again, yeah, really? Through much of the 20th century, through much of the 20th century. And then you've got the French revolution. OK. Right.

This, this sparking the vision of a good society. You've got, you know, the, the French revolution contained many voices from the European past, some of which we've talked about, right. You got, you got the, you know, the, the Assembly Democrat of the Greek City states, the struggle for representative councils and parliaments, the ideals of the Levelers and American Declaration of independence from colonial domination.

You got communist protests against the powerful revolutionary talk of Democrats in the low countries, right that we talked about the revolution, combined the, the the French revolution really combined these voices into a new anthem sung by a chorus of angry voices denouncing aristocrats, monarchy and unelected privilege. But it was not as often claimed the first ever moment in, in in modern European history to talk positively about democracy.

Um you know, you've got, you know, the the the the burgers of the low countries had already done that more than a century before the French events after 17 89 instead injected energy into the language of democracy by altering its meaning. And, and we'll talk about the meaning of democracy more throughout this episode, how it kept getting kind of reinterpreted and, and changed and, and never completely precisely defined, right?

Um You, you've got, you know, quote unquote democracy as, as kind of, you know, AAA type of self government based on equal representation. And it starts to get kind of redefined into a type of social order in which hereditary power over others is abolished and egalitarian virtues flourish and you go through these other kind of definition.

So anyway, so the French revolution, um obviously many of you are very familiar with that, you can go read about the history there, but really what it was doing was again, not some, you know, this is the first moment in modern European history to talk positively about democracy. No, but it did inject energy into the language and started to alter its meaning. Uh As many would say in a positive direction. So democracy is really catching on. OK. Um you can call this the time for democracy, right?

So you've got the, you know, American independence, you've got the, the Civil War that happened. You've got the French revolution, you've got all that um you know, ma major characters coming in, you, you know, the fight against slavery, you got women's suffrage, Canada and India uh were being taken over by Britain at the zenith of their power. And you've got the seven years War, which is by Americans call this the French and Indian War.

You've got the Canadian version of representative democracy following that seven year war. So you can go read all about that history and how Canadians are now starting to get, to get the democratic ideals are moving away from the British influence. Uh Not as much as the US, obviously, but still straight, you know, striking their independence. Um You've got the Australian secret ballot system that catches on across Europe and North America.

So this, this, this idea of the secret ballot system that comes to us from Australia. Uh women's suffrage uh are, are just starting to make really great strides that originally started. If you really to go to, to try to pick a, a place where the root of, you know, women's rights where they took off, it was actually the Pica is Pica Island. Uh as the first place where women could officially vote and while eventually squashed, it did show the possibility and ignited change across Europe.

So this, this Pitcairn Island very isolated. Uh This crazy thing is happening where a woman can actually vote. And that, you know, other people, you know, it got squashed, but people got aware of this, they realized it worked and, and again, just like how the printing press kind of promulgated a lot of messaging and, and people realized what was possible. So is the case with women's suffrage? Um So let's so, so, so you've got democracy really taking off.

You've got, you know, it's being re redefined, reinterpreted, it's still got a lot of different sources. A lot of it is as has swung westward, but you've got all these different kind of instances happening. Um But we need to talk about the disintegration of democracy as well. Again, this book is called The Life and Death of Democracy. So what I think of this as as in many ways hardly being for quote unquote the people. And I already talked about this a little bit.

There is always the vulnerability of, of, of representative democracy to subversion at the hands of demagogues, appealing to the people, right? So you're using the language of the, so, so forget just in terms of the language, you can use democratic language to really subvert the whole process, right? I mean, Hitler himself used this by saying, uh you know, quote unquote, it is uh uh it is the fundamental thesis of democracy that all power derives from the people, quote, end quote, right?

And then of course, he acted on that principle to destroy representative democracy. Um So, so really from, from sovereign states to power hungry nationalists, we see this play out. Woodrow Wilson's government, a remedy for the European sickness was insistent that each nation was entitled to govern itself. And that peace would come when Europe was governed by sovereign states that doubled as representative democracies.

Uh But of course, this ended up playing into the hands of power hungry nationalists. OK. So, so you got Woodrow Wilson saying, look, I just, you know, spread the democracy have self governed states. But when you create those self governed states, then nationalism can rise up because you become very proud of where you're from, you become very proud of the state and the way that you specifically do things uh you, you, you, you raise up your borders and that can start to seed nationalism.

So you can see that nothing is for free. I mean, it's got good parts and then it's got bad parts, it gets back into this kind of whack a mole mechanism that I was talking about previously. And so as as as democracy continues to get reinvented, it's for this very reason, it's for this very reason is that you go to do something which seems really good. You put it in place. It, it, it can get subverted. It has a downside. It presents levers to people who do things for the wrong reasons.

And they might not even think they're doing it for the wrong reasons. They might think that, no, that, that's just, you know, in their head they've got the moral high ground and this is what we're supposed to do and of course, it leads to catastrophe or some bad stuff. Uh during World War one, between 1914 and 1918 civilians comprised 1/20 of the victims during 1939 to 1945. War. World War Two, the proportion rose to two thirds.

And by the end of the century, about 9/10 of the victims of war were civilians. So you've got democracy, you've got the spread of democracy, you've got all these, you know, not that the world wars, you know, we do democracy due to democracy necessarily, but playing a big role is supposed to be about the people and yet the civilian deaths from war, you know, 9/10 of victims of war by the end of the century, um were civilians. So continuing on with the disintegration of democracy.

You've got Churchill's famous speech, right? He gave his famous speech where, you know, he said many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world. They, you know, except for all others that have been tried. So, democracy is essentially, you know, uh, the best or the worst, so to speak. Um, Churchill's words displayed the rebound of democracy's ideals and institutions towards a new type of democracy. That new type of democracy still today enjoys no proper name.

So you've got this building and destroying and building and destroying a democracy. It's going through all its different ups and downs, different governments have been tried democracy as an ideal, seems to be the best, seems to have a lot going for it. But it's hardly without its friction and it's constantly being reinvented and the democracy that we have today, this type of representative democracy.

And actually, it's, it's more properly called, properly called mon toy democracy, which we'll get into. That's something that John Key uh decides to call it. Um We'll talk about that in a bit but this representative democracy that we have today is uh kind of enjoys no proper name because in a way it's not really necessarily representative, it kind of is, it kind of isn't, you've got power plays that are happening and you've got all the friction, so lots of different ways to think about it.

Um Now I don't want to talk about uh Indian democracy because this is really interesting. So India, we talk about again. So, so you've got this American democracy happening, you've got this kind of narrative that it's that, you know, this is really where democracy is taking place and this is where it's being architected. And so if you want to do democracy yourself, you're gonna probably have to do it similar to how the West has done it similar to how, let's say the United States has done it.

And so there's this kind of idea that it cannot work anywhere else. And that's, that's a narrative that we see a lot of evidence to the contrary. And a good example of that would be Indian democracy. You've got this path breaking Indian experiment. So the historical importance of India's experiment, democracy is really something worth uh discussing. You've got this break with empire that pushed the young Asian democracy into uncharted waters, right?

So it, it, it, it sailed towards a compound form of representative government, one defined by many new qualities. If you take a look at what was happening in India, the people, you've got uh disparate population, poverty, illiteracy and all these other distinctions that should have made democracy, maybe not work if you were following that narrative.

But actually, it was able to thrive despite all these or maybe even because of this disparate population, the fact that they've got pop uh you know, poverty, literacy and other distinctions.

India proved that, you know, one of the lessons in the history of democracy that it it teaches us is that history sometimes teaches us the wrong lessons India showed not only that democracy could surmount violence and carnage it proved that democracy could thrive within a society that lacked a homogeneous population. A civil society shackled by poverty and illiteracy and crowded with all sorts of cultural, religious and historical distinctions.

And yet democracy could still take off and still thrive. So, you know, going back to what I just said previously about, you know, today, democracy enjoys no proper name. I mean, what is democracy? Because, you know, you might have thought that it needs to have kind of a cohesion, people speaking the same language, you know, you can't have a lot of poverty. You've got to kind of get your country or state to a certain point before democracy can take off.

But that's not what history shows, it could take off in all kinds of different forms. So Indian democracy had new mechanisms for greater public accountability. So they brought things to democracy that, you know, what did not exist in the United States version or other European versions. OK. India demonstrated that democracy could experiment with new mechanisms designed to introduce greater public accountability. This was true for decisions by government at all levels.

In virtually every case, the new accountability mechanisms were purveyors of the principle that periodic elections were not enough. OK. So you've got the, you know, the the citizens interest had to be represented not only through general elections and debates and within parliament, but also through a variety of Post Westminster processes, right? Trying to get away from getting away from the the the British power here. The list of processes that India brought is long and interesting.

Uh But just to name a few, there are robust written constitution, the creation of a three tier system of government, stronger local self government, more explicit division of powers between states and central government. They introduced compulsory quotas for representing in groups, representing groups that were previously excluded, stronger judicial view, uh judicial review, sorry, and a new power checking mechanisms that covered many different concerns.

So Indian democracy taking off in a place where many thought it was not going to be possible and not only that but bringing a lot of new mechanisms to to again kind of whack them, all right, but to help with a lot of the cons that were present in democracy, got uh Nehru uh you know, Nehru leading much of the way of democratizing India since their independence in 1947. And uh you know, following the defeat, uh the defeat of the quote unquote emergency that was in India.

So I'll talk about that in a second, but was the introduction of quotas that were far more reaching than anything experienced at the age of representative democracy. So all state institutions were required to set aside places and jobs for groups. The constitution had originally called the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. OK. So the government had to make room for so-called backward classes which are mainly shu estimated to be about 52% of the population.

So that emergency as you may have heard of in India, it was uh you know, a 21 month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared across the country, right? And uh it had this internal disturbance and this emergency that happened as they put it into effect. And you know, essentially this order bestowed upon the Prime Minister, the authority to rule by decree allowing elections to be canceled and civil liberties to be suspended.

And so they had this kind of dark area of this emergency that happened. And then following that, they put these quotas in place. Um In 1933 the Indian parliament extended democracy downwards and sideways by introducing local self government to India's 600,000 villages and towns and this was called the Panchayat reforms.

Um and, and film I think is actually kind of interesting film played a very large role in helping citizens feel publicly represented, represented sorry in the language religion or region of their choice. So you've got, you know, probably the perhaps the the most famous is the work of uh Sait Rai, right? Saa ra whose work was often described as art cinema.

OK. So Rai made um detective films, historical dramas and outstanding children's films based on stories written by his grandfather Indian films were a pleasant distraction from unpleasant realities, but they were much more than, than in, in that they were, they were about to come and help promote democracy. By 1990 India had overtaken the United States as the world's leading producer of films with more than 900 new films screened each year across more than 9000 theaters.

So you've got, again, kind of like that printing press, right? You've got this, this word getting out there. You've got it coming in the form of entertainment, promoting the narrative of democracy across India. And then of course, as I said before, India, bringing all kinds of new um innovations to the democratic process. So pretty interesting.

Um It's not all good you do have, you know, but where it kind of goes up and then it goes down again, you've got the B JP and nationalism that started to rise in India, the rise of the, of the B JP. Uh the Barata Janata party uh was, is strictly nationalist B JP harnessed big campaign financing, you know, secret backroom planning, slick press statements and photo opportunities to wield their influence.

Um It went celebrity hunting to experiment with disinformation and negative imaging, trial, balloon policy announcements and saturation campaign advertising. Uh They did this in a carpet bombing fashion across India. Uh in India is 675 million voters, right? Um B JP came to power due to uh really you could argue the large middle class, the reason I caught on is because you know, the Indian middle class had doubled in size from less than 10% of the population in 1984 to around 20%.

In 2004, the middle class started to indulge nostalgia by claiming that the emergency had been a good thing for India. Exactly because state officials worked without asking uh uh for, for the streets to be cleared from demonstrators and because of hoarders of black market dealers and misfit politicians were all put behind bars. So there's this kind of cleaning or cleansing that was happening, that was apparently good.

Um So majority of this middle class was willing to draw the conclusion that democracy was merely a state of mind and that an eye on the future required something different so much so that they believe progress in India required something like a dictator. So Indians really began to believe that India needed a stronger state, stronger leadership, less compromise, less dissent and more direction. So we've got this back and forth and you can kind of compare that to the last episode.

We talk about strong heaters and concentration of power and dispersal of power and you've got this kind of pendulum swinging and, and, but, but what I think is interesting here is that you can take this great success story that's happening in India of really, you know, getting democracy to work there and then all of a sudden having the population be convinced that maybe it's not so good, maybe it's not so great and the pendulum can start to swing the other way.

So again, it's not just something that takes off. And uh yeah, it's a really, really interesting story there. So at this point, we can say that we've got the spread of democracy across all four corners of the planet, right? For the first time in history, democracy has gone on trial in all four corners of the planet for half a century. After 1945 democratic miracles happened literally on every continent. It even reached Antarctica. Uh the Indian subcontinent, Asia with the case of Taiwan.

Um showing that democracy with Asian characteristics is possible, also defied the modern textbook rule that democracy could only survive in a country defined by sovereign territorial borders. OK. So again, going against the usual Weston narrative, um Japan Israel, right founded in 1948 as a uh according to John Key, right, as a rescue operation from European genocide, right?

This was a type of democracy infused with the spirit of Judaism and included this uh a sizable minority of Arab Israeli people. Um You've got South Africa as another example in a half century after World war two, the hand of electoral democracy touched virtually every part of the earth often in a random and unpredictable ways. Again, um you know, there are no giants only shoulders that same type of mechanism. You expect these things to percolate from many different areas.

It has no singular root cause has no nice end to end deterministic chain of causality. It's coming up from all over the place. There was no clear pattern of causation, right? And John Key says there was no discernible pattern. For example, the idea that there was a causal link between democracy and a strong middle class or a close affinity between protestantism and democracy or its dependence on upon lofty levels of literacy and formal education. The rule was that there was no rule.

You keep seeing examples of democracy taking root and being successful in places that don't follow that formula. OK? Um Continuing on with democracy taking root, you've got the colored revolutions, right? The world had found a way to put an end to bossy governments that exceeded their limits, abused their authority and failed to deliver on their promises. So of course, the decades after 1945 witnessed plenty of setbacks as well.

You know, for example, one third of the world's 32 functioning democracies in the year 1958 had lapsed by the mid 19 seventies into some form of authoritarianism. But by and large, you still had all these kind of revolutions that were popping up that showed uh you know, democracy taking off. You got Uruguay brought Latin America back into constitutional democracy. Uh you know, again, trying to do away with that code democracy, right? The Calos uh Brazil shuffled towards electoral democracy.

So to Costa Rica, Argentina Peru, Colombia Venezuela across the whole globe, people were fed, educated and healthier and this is uh the argument is starting to be made, right? If you look at democracy and where it's taking off, the quality of life is, is rising across all these places. You got the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in November of 1980 nine.

You got the October Revolution in the early months of 1997 the Rose revolution, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Tulip revolution, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon and online um in, in, in a case that Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, you're really kind of reviving the Syrian Mesopotamian spirit of assembly uh that we had talked about previously. So we've got all of this spreading of democracy, all these revolutions, you know, a lot of success stories.

Of course, there's, there's, you know, parts where it falls down doesn't really work, but you know, it's really spreading across the globe. It's really being tested in all four corners of the planet. Um So, is this the end of history? And that's actually the title of a famous essay uh by Francis Fukuyama who he wrote it in 1989. He's an American political scientist, political economist and writer, uh you know, the Deputy Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff.

He published this essay called uh The End of History.

Um And he was, he, he just really was taking a look at the world and everything that happened all the way up to, you know, obviously, you know, the the the collapse of the wall in 1989 the Berlin Wall and and just believe that the trend towards liberal democracy was confirmed right by the collapse of military Dictatorships argue that, you know, he argued that the last decades of the 20th century proved that the class issue had been successfully resolved in the West, That market driven consumerism had triumphed.

He said this was evidence by the peasant markets and color television sets. Now omnipresent throughout China cooperative restaurants and clothing stores opened uh in Moscow, the Beethoven being piped into Japanese department stores and rock music enjoyed in, in in places like, you know, Prague and Tehran. So he, he just, he saw that, you know, he believed that Marxist Leninist ideology proved to be clueless when confronted by the power of Western science and technology.

He said the deol collectivization of agriculture and increased production of consumer goods via Deng Xiaoping. Remember we talked about him in the last episode, the Persik initiated by Gorbachev just hammered the last few nails in the coffin of Marxism, Leninism, imperialism, nationalism, communism, fascism, realism, military dictatorship had all been pushed to the wayside.

Francis Fukuyama concluded that we were standing at the end point of humankind's ideological evolution and the corresponding universal organization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. In short, he was basically saying, you know, if you look at all through history with monarchy and centralization of power and Dictatorships and constant war that we kind of figured that out. We, we, you know, democracy is spreading. It's catching on.

There's obviously something very natural about it. Humans want to do this, there needs to be representation of the everyday person. It's the end of history, the end of all that monarchy and centralization and control of dictatorship and communism. You know, democracy must be the answer. The end of history. There's also another uh piece of work by Huntington called the Third wave. Um And he kind of, he talks about 1st, 2nd, 3rd wave uh in his writing.

Um But anyways, uh you know, the, the Francis Fukuyama is a good example of just, you know, late eighties gets to the point where the, the, the common sense of things is that, hey, we figured this out democracy is the answer and I'm going to uh just, and the first part of this. So this will be part one of the episode.

Uh We got some more stuff to go into part two, we're going to get into um you know, we've talked about direct democracy, we've talked about representative democracy and you can call the current Age of democracy, uh monetary democracy. And that's what John Key talks about uh that, that calls it in his book. And so we'll talk about this, this idea of democracy being democratized.

OK, basically having watchdogs in place to make sure democracy is going as it should some of the pros, some of the cons. So we'll really talk about the age of monetary democracy and uh we'll talk about the pitfalls and we'll eventually just come to terms with, you know, whether or not democracy really is the answer. Uh It is, does it really have this universality where it can catch on anywhere?

Um We'll talk, you know, we reiterate some of the narratives that we've challenged uh of, of kind of uh not just the birthplace being Athens Greece, but the, the, you know, the West that they can only work with Western ideals. And we've already seen like in cases of India that that's not the case. Um go back to, to some of those, you know, is it a secular thing or does it depend on kind of this belief in a higher power and stuff like that?

And we'll end it off in there and then I'll get into the mathematics of democracy. And I promised in the last episode that from, you know, the last episode on I will be taking, you know, adding a little bit of rigor to the mechanisms that I talk about by taking a look at some of the mathematical models that are applied to these core mechanisms. And so we'll take a look at the mathematical theory of democracy. I mean, again, I talk about this at a high level.

So I don't get scared if math is not your thing, try not to be too esoteric on these episodes. But we take a look at how something like democracy is modeled. How do we capture that in the symbols of math? And then we'll, you know, we've got that non trivial playground where I actually take that mathematics and I play it out on the computer so you can have toggles and levers and you can play around with it.

And so we'll take a look at, you know, kind of, again, building some of that muscle memory around these concepts around these mechanisms that I like to talk about. So we'll do that. I think that will be really interesting. So I've ended this as part one of the democracy episode. So stay tuned for part two. It's going to come out only a few days later, I promise, you know, again, this was just under 900 page book. There's a lot to get through. I know there's a lot of historical facts.

We will get into those interesting mechanisms that I will do. We'll do that in part two. So stay tuned. Come back. Can't wait to see you again. Take care.