Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

The word “democracy” comes from the Greek dēmokratia, which in turn comes from two roots: dēmos, meaning “people,” and kratos, meaning “rule.” In a literal sense, democracy thus means “ruled by the people.” Americans might be most familiar with this concept though a phrase made famous by President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, when he declared that the United States is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Lincoln, Abraham. “Gettysburg address delivered at Gettysburg Pa. Nov. 19th, 1863.” Library of Congress). The central idea behind a democracy is that the people of a country should play a central role in its operation and that a ruling government’s power and authority should come from the consent of the governed.

Many people trace democracy back to Athens in the fifth century BCE, where “all adult citizens were required to take an active part in the government” (“Democracy (Ancient Greece).” National Geographic Education, 2023). While many 21st-century democracies consider voting a right rather than a responsibility, some democratic countries still have compulsory voting. Like the early American concept of citizenship that Heather Cox Richardson discusses, the ancient Athenian concept of citizenship did not include women, children, or enslaved persons: Only a select group or free men were considered citizens and therefore had a