The Marriage of Liberalism and Democracy - Discourse - 0 views
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liberalism democracy discourse free speech history
shared by Javier E on 13 Dec 22
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It seems natural that people would be more concerned about what the government is doing, and what results it achieves, than they are about how such questions are decided.
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Yet in the end, Americans voted based more on the “how” than on the “what,” and they were correct. The right to vote is so important to the cause of human freedom that it overwhelms all other considerations.
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But what is the point and justification for democracy? Is it simply that the majority should always get its way? In practice, no one actually seems to believe this or to want unlimited democracy.
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the First Amendment and Bill of Rights—cornerstones of the American system of government—limit what laws Congress may pass and therefore what the majority may do. That is their whole point.
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Clearly what we want is not unlimited majority rule, but liberal democracy: a majority vote, within the context of protections for fundamental rights. This is still “democracy” in the literal sense—rule by the people—but that rule is limited by liberal principles.
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The usual case for liberal democracy is captured in a quote from 20th-century political philosopher Judith Shklar that has been making the rounds recently: “Liberalism is monogamously, faithfully, and permanently married to democracy—but it is a marriage of convenience.”
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The idea is that it is impossible to maintain a liberal system—“liberal” in the political philosopher’s sense, meaning a free society—without representative government and other democratic institutions. But democracy is merely a means to an end. It is justified not by an imperative to manifest some kind of mystical collective will, but as a safeguard for individual liberty.
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These two stories sum up the promise and peril of rule by the people. The whole trick of liberal democracy is to create a system that will protect us from Tarquin, while protecting Socrates from us.
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Both liberalism and democracy—as words and as ideas—have their roots in the classical world, and there are two stories from Ancient Greece and Rome that define their proper relationship.
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Yet I think we can encourage a little more love in the marriage between liberalism and democracy by finding some common ground in the basic principles behind them.
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The principle behind representative government is the same as that underlying liberalism: the equal rights of individuals. Democracy is founded on the recognition that some men are not born with saddles on their backs, as Thomas Jefferson put it, while others are not born booted and spurred. If all men are created equal, with equal rights, they are entitled to an equal say over how they are governed and by whom.
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The populist leader pretends to speak for the people and to champion their interests, but he always defines “the people” to mean his faction. They alone are the real Americans who represent the heartland. Everyone else doesn’t count: Their preferences are presumed to be manufactured and illegitimate—and their rights and interests do not have to be respected.
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there is a deeper common value that bonds liberalism and democracy. In a free society, respect for the rights of others requires that you deal with them through bargaining and persuasion rather than coercion. Same for democracy.
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A liberal democracy protects against democratic abuses of power through a system of checks and balances, in which some democratic institutions are given the power and incentive to limit other democratic institutions
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The reward of a democratic system is not just that it limits the power of our leaders, but that it holds them to account for their mistakes and allows a country to reverse their errors.
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Freedom of speech has been called the “first freedom,” but part of the point of protecting speech is to allow us to criticize our leaders so we can then vote them out. Historically, the vote is the first freedom and the origin of all the others
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This is why it is so important to protect liberal democracy when any party threatens it and why voters are right to make this a higher priority than other, seemingly more immediate problems