Going back to the Acropolis for me is a bit like going back to the “home place” of my grandparents in Arkansas. What I feel there is always much more than what I see or say. My grandparents homestead, dating from the late 1800s isn’t very old, but it’s like so many simple rural American buildings of its time. My grandparents weren’t known to people outside our family, but their old log house has been placed in the registry of historic places. It wasn’t my grandparents who made history. It was their log house that has become a symbol of our country’s generosity and commitment to neighbors, even when the neighbors weren’t exactly like themselves. In Athens, the buildings on the acropolis tell the story.

My friend Antonis says, “More than what you say is what you feel.” The Acropolis in Athens is definitely more about feeling. The Acropolis is at the center of an area where the first serious attempts were made to establish democracy. In the spectacular ruins of the Parthenon, the Old Temple of Athena, and a couple of other temples were set the standards of beauty and honor and truth in architecture for people of all time to respect and follow; and when people begin to value beauty and honor and truth, they most naturally turn to democratic thinking and democratic processes. It is no great wonder that this is the place where democracy was first discovered and valued.

One of the great misunderstandings the Tea Party group in America have about democracy is that they insist it is about the individual. They want the individual to be free from regulation, to be free from responsibility for the whole population, and especially to be free from taxation. The individual must be responsible for his own health care, his own well-being in old age, his comfort. Tea Party political thinking it based either on gross ignorance of the history of democracy or on willful, malicious determination to erase real democracy from the American political system. Democracy was established in Greece as a reaction to tyranny. American Democracy has been a work in progress from the beginning. It is taking a long time for everybody to recognize and acknowledge that “all means all.” We must never forget that slavery lasted nearly a hundred years in America. Women weren’t considered equal to men (in America or in Athens) at the beginning of those democracies, and they weren’t allowed to participate at the beginning. Now we know better, but we still are holding democracy back from some American groups. Until this very day our democracy doesn’t include gays and lesbians as fully participating citizens.

Democracy is hard. It requires citizens to turn, as Jesus said (and Buddha and Mohammed if their followers read carefully and understand), love your neighbor as yourself.” The great thinkers said clearly that putting oneself first is ultimately a stumbling block to getting things right for all the people. King George got it wrong, so the colonies in America broke away and began the process of making democracy work for all the people. Still today it requires thoughtfulness, dialogue, and compromise. Gradually we do get it right. We must believe we can get it right in these difficult times.