What Would Socrates Say? Essay

What Would Socrates Say?
It has been more than 200 years since the Constitution of the United States was drafted and democracy started growing and flowering from the pure form into its modern form. Democracy is a very old word that was first introduced by the Greeks, and it justly stands for social equality. A democratic society is characterized as “government of the people, by the people, for the people” where everyone’s opinion ought to count equally (Lincoln, qtd. in Palmer). Even though democracy as a form of government was established already in 640 BC in ancient Greece, the true state of democracy has never been accomplished yet, and it may continue this path without a break forever. The story starts in Socrates’ motherland, Greece, where the Greeks exercised democracy in a way that does not appear very democratic to us today. According to the Greeks, all citizens were obliged to participate in running the state; however, not every resident was also a citizen. For instance, women, slaves, and residents who did not own a piece of land were not considered citizens. Furthermore, the major Greek philosophers believed that democracy was the worst form of government ever. Today, modern democracy is in fact represented by a group of selected people that are appointed to govern the whole society. Naturally, democracy has been, is, and always will be a significant part of human beings as well as it probably will never stop developing since no government is perfect.   I strongly agree with Socrates’ view claiming “that a democracy is the most attractive of all societies” because it is one of the oldest government systems, it allows plurality of opinions that increases the effective strengths and decreases the defective weaknesses, and it calls for changes in our principles to make democracy that form of government in which we want to live (Plato 293).
    It took 2000 years for the legacy of ancient Greece to sprout its roots in Western Europe where monarchy was...