That the U.S. became a democracy for the first time in 1965. What! you say.
The breaking point is whether you can say any nation is a democracy when 10% and more of its population are deprived of civil rights; everyone else has civil rights with minor exceptions like Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and even women if circumscribed rights puts one in the same boat with Blacks and Mexicans.
But that is just the point here: as in all discussions you start off with defining your terms, democracy being key here. Some would even say the extremely limited franchise of the earliest years of the new republic still permitted us to call ourselves a democracy. But for some of us, it is hard to label a country that permits lynching as a way of voter suppression a democracy.
So that’s a criterion: are you a liberal or a conservative? Were we a democracy in 1916 or in 1948?
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
