Oldal 28 [28]
OCR
ANTON PELINKA Taiwan, and the Philippines also became transformed in democracies — and in South-Africa, the ethno-racist Apartheid-regime was replaced by a democratic system, based on inclusive free elections. Today, existing democracies combine the political freedom and legal equality of democracy with the principles of a market economy, based on private property. The future debate will circle around the problem if democracy can only be possible in a capitalist economic environment — or whether democracy could become possible in combination with another (post-capitalist?) economic system. DEMOCRACY IN MODERN TIMES No future without history. Yet to understand democracy historically, a short overview of the history of thought about democracy may serve to help us. I mention a few significant highlights: ¢ The birth of the American Republic (Late 18'* Century) (Founding Fathers USA) + "The United States used the pattern of the separation of power, established in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, but replaced the unelected monarch with a president, elected for a specific number of years s Inthe 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville analyzed American democracy from the viewpoint of post-revolutionary Europe (“Democracy in America”) + Abraham Lincoln (The Gettysburg Address), the Civil War and the abolition of slavery ended the legal exclusion of African Americans 3 The Gettysburg Address was — in the midst of the American Civil War - delivered by Abraham Lincoln on 19 November 1863 at the Soldier’s National Cemetary in Gettysburgh. Pennsylvania. It is a famous and constitutive part of the American political heritage, and may be found in publications and textbooks everywhere in the US and around the world. In his short speech Linclon stated — among other things — that: “four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which + 26 +
