Universal Suffrage Is Not Democracy
The generally recognized beginning of democracy was in 508 BC in Athens Greece where all free men of the city could vote. Men that were citizens of other city-states could not vote, women could not vote, children could not vote, and slaves could not vote. To begin with, women make up slightly more than 50% of the population, and in Ancient Greece with a male warrior population being killed in battle it was even higher, and there were two slaves for everyone one free person, add the children and the number comes out under 15%, probably closer to 10% of the population that could vote, and they had a senate that they elected to do the actual legislation. And for the next 2,400 years that is what democracy meant everywhere on the planet, that only free men could vote. Then in the 1820s and 1830s in the United States most states gave white men without property or money the right to vote, and in 1834 Great Britain began freeing slaves. The United States also freed the slaves in the 1860s and...