Democracy has never been an idyll  Ziauddin Sardar
  Published 19 July 2007
    
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  Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, had never actually read any of the works of Plato he so airily cited
  Athens, as we all know, is the birthplace of western civilisation. From Athens come art, science, sculpture, rhetoric and philosophy. But most of all from Athens we derive democracy and the traditions of free assembly and speech - the character traits that give the west its sense of difference and superiority.
  I have just returned from Athens. And I can report that the iconic monuments of the cradle of democracy, like everything else in the city, are being overwhelmed by pollution and sheer ugliness. Channel 4 is about to air a two-part series on the city that suggests that ancient Greece was just as ugly. For centuries we have been duped by an image of Athens which is mostly fiction.
  When Americans were debating the constitutional revolution that would be their new republic, they invoked the heroes of Athenian democracy. But Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, had never actually read any of the works of Plato he so airily cited. When he caught up on his reading he was totally appalled. The new nation, however, continues to construct its public buildings in homage to the ideal of Athens, and seeks to impose its vision of the Athenian inheritance of democracy on other people, even at the point of a gun.
  Presented by the historian Bettany Hughes, Athens: the Truth About Democracy argues that the Athenian model was rooted in military adventurism and the economic exploitation of slave labour. This democracy was not inclusive: it veiled women in public and excluded them from public life. Deeply rooted in superstition, it labelled all objectors "idiotes". In short order this newfangled democracy destroyed itself through endemic warfare, enthusiastically supported by the select voting populace.
  In other words, democracy is no idyll; it is what people make of it. It is no good looking at an idealised model. What Athenians did with it is at least as relevant. Socrates, who gave us our noble ideal of free speech, was condemned to death for upsetting the established moral order. The political ideas of his student Plato were eulogised by Stalin and Hitler.
  Rather than being true to the xenophobia that was a defining quality of the classical Greek world-view, we would do well to consider their achievements in context. This is one of two opportunities missed in the Channel 4 documentaries. Their focus is on an Athens detached from its vibrant, Middle Eastern contemporaries. The Greeks did not emerge from nothing. Their thought, art and science derived from the sophistication of the Middle Eastern civilisations with which they contended for dominance.
  The second missed opportunity is the failure to explore properly the suggestion that there are explicit parallels between the histories of Athenian democracy and the United States, the country that most resembles the classical model. Like Athens, the US is an imperial power based on a war economy. Like Athens, America exploits the people and wealth of other nations. Like Athens, American democracy is elitist. And like Athens, America needs to be judged not by its claims, but by what it makes of its high ambition.
  Making a realistic assessment of Athens is not to deny it any kudos. The trouble is that in so many ways we make this legacy into nothing short of a Greek tragedy, in which there is one essential element: blood. Greek tragedies are harrowing explorations of the destruction of families and whole societies, and the venality and hubris of the political ambition that sets events in motion. Think of Bush and Blair, Iraq and Afghanistan. And wonder just how little things have changed. 
  "Athens: the Truth About Democracy" is broadcast on Channel 4 on 21 and 28 July (8pm)
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