The people's road
http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5080918
Oct 27th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Achieving democracy in early America was a long, slow haul
DEMOCRACY is a word that gets bandied about. George Bush likes to
remind voters of the pressing need to "secure freedom and
democracy" in Iraq. Afghanistan's recent elections signal that it is
on the "road toward a stable democracy". The United Nations has
lately (at America's urging) started up a "Democracy Fund" as a
bulwark for fragile democracies. And so it goes.
Yet democracy is a fluid concept. No one knows this better than the
world's oldest continuous democracy. Minority rights, which Mr Bush
says are among the "common principles" of democracies, were
non-existent when America began. Its founders held slaves. They
excluded blacks, women and many landless white men from voting. Free
speech was often elusive, and even the much-feted system of checks and
balances got off to a rocky start as early presidents simply ignored
Supreme Court rulings.
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
By Sean Wilentz
Norton; 992 pages; $35
Sean Wilentz
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