ABSTRACT
Of the many things the authors have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted. But out of the wrack of recent events has emerged a new sense of its attractiveness. The authors are living today on the thin edge of history, and that does an enormous amount to change our perspectives. It would be easier to see through the uses to which democracy is put if they were not so accustomed to view it as a universal. Most recently Thomas Mann, in an eloquent appreciation of the value and creative strength of democracy, based that appreciation on the premise that democracy is one of the inherent and universal polar expressions of the human character. Democracy then must be seen, like any other form of political organization, in the focus of history. There have been primitive communities, such as those of the American Indian tribes, that have achieved a democratic organization.
