"An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private--as opposed to public--affairs. Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education. In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education."
Wikipedia article re Athenian democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_(Athenian_democracy)
"People who customarily refer to themselves as taxpayers are not even remotely related to democratic citizens. Yet this is precisely the word that now regularly holds the place which in a true democracy would be occupied by 'citizens.' Taxpayers bear a dual relationship to government, neither half of which has anything at all to do with democracy. Taxpayers pay tribute to the government, and they receive services from it. So does every subject of a totalitarian regime. What taxpayers do not do, and what people who call themselves taxpayers have long since stopped even imagining themselves doing, is governing. In a democracy, by the very meaning of the word, the people govern."
Quoted in citation above, from Daniel Kemmis's The Good City and the Good Life.
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