Howard Zinn And Sidney Hook: A Definition Of Democracy In America

How democratic is America? It’s a question which seems simple, but when we examine it, it becomes a much more complex problem. People often define democracy in different ways. Howard Zinn and Sidney Hook, both famous historians, are two of those who define it quite differently. Howard Zinn chooses to define it as a set of criteria that examine the quality of life of our citizens, whether that is access to information, or equal pay. Hook on the other hand chooses to examine it in a more procedural nature, focusing on the criteria that categorize a procedural democracy, whether that is majority rule or universal participation. But democracy cannot be defined as one of those views or the other. In my mind, there are four criteria that can be used …show more content…
We are a melting pot of different opinions and ideas, and if we choose to ignore those with different opinions, we are losing much of our democracy. In her book A Dinner with Democracy, Cynthia Farrar details an experiment she ran in which she had a group of people, mostly college students and professors from the town of New Haven, eat dinner at her house and talk about politics. These people came from different backgrounds and had varying opinions on a wide range of topics. In this discussion, they enacted a participatory democracy, in which everyone was given the opportunity to discuss their ideas. Many people at that dinner expressed the new ideas they had learned about, and how they were able to look at politics through a broader scope than before. But in America, very little of our country is willing to perform this type of experiment. One in three Americans declines to discuss politics except in private; fewer than one in four ever talk with someone with whom they disagree politically. Many might say that such a thing as Farrar’s experiment wouldn’t work in real life, because of the dangers of a direct democracy. And that’s true. The most common modern examples of a direct democracy are referendums, which are actually dangerous to democracy because of the lack of information that people have. But without civil discourse, no one can truly have informed decisions about policy issues, because they aren’t seeing this from both sides. If we can’t understand the opposing viewpoint, we can’t really understand our own viewpoint. One of the keys to a better democracy is a more informed body of people, and the way to inform them is through civil