This article examines how American elites have expanded an empire constantly at war while ignoring the needs of the vast majority at home. It sketches the present political moment centered on President Barack Obama’s first 18 months in office, then looks at ancient Athens in order to pick up concepts that Athenians debated, such as citizenship based on democratic equality and freedom, as well as its oligarchic opposites. Drawing on Athenian ideas and practices of democracy by politically empowered citizen-peasants, artisans, and casual laborers can deepen our understanding of the many anti-democratic features of the U.S. political system. Similarly, we may gain a better perspective on the persistence of imperialism in our own time by seeing how Athenians forcibly acquired foreign economic, political, and geographical assets in order to enhance the power of their city-state, often violating law and their own moral norms in the use of military force.
http://www.zcommunications.org/what-the-past-teaches-about-u-s-democracy-by-herbert-p-bix.html
