[B-Cause]

Or is it conceivable that the distributed network embodied by the Tea Parties could become a political system in and of itself? This is a tantalizing possibility. In ancient Athens, the citizenry met as a whole to decide critical questions. Could such a system return in our day, with the net and Twitter and Facebook replacing the Athenian agora? How would this function in relation to established constitutional principles? How, under such circumstances, do we preserve the safeguards of representative government?

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[lentulusgracchus]

[Art.] Could such a system return in our day, with the net and Twitter and Facebook replacing the Athenian agora? How would this function in relation to established constitutional principles?

I've thought for years -- 30-plus years -- that technology now allows us to create a truly mass polity on Athenian lines that would transcend the old Platonic and Aristotelian limits imposed by the Pnyx and the Areopagos, to how big a demos could be.

But the counter is a good one: Just because you can do something is not in itself a reason to do it. The Framers had other considerations in mind when they created a representative government.

Time now to assay the results: Have representatives and electors been faithful? Or has Big Money found a way to corrupt representatives and make them, always and inevitably, Money's bought tools?

Have ideological, Gramscian Communist "long marchers" found a way to pollute and defeat the public discourse?