Democracy and Liberalism

Democracy and Liberalism are distinct ideas. Democracy means majoritarian rule. Liberalism* means protection of individual rights. Democracy is voting, elections, and the House of Representatives. Liberalism is the Bill of Rights. Liberalism can be anti-democratic: no matter if a majority wants to, it can’t take away my right to free speech. Similarly, democracy can be illiberal: without the First Amendment, any mob could get elected to Congress and outlaw my blog. Most democracies prior to ours were illiberal—Ancient Athens—and even some more recent (Revolutionary France), places where majorities ruled without respect for individual liberty. Rare examples exist of liberal autocracies: 1870s Germany, perhaps, and modern-day Qatar and Singapore come close, where autocrats deign to allow their subjects some freedoms. Liberal democracy, by contrast, is an elegant invention.

The distinction sheds light on some debates today. The judicial branch has become, in effect, a Liberal autocracy. They have divined new rights in recent decades, from privacy to sexual conduct and now, it seems, to gay marriage—indeed, as of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, we apparently have the “right to define [our] own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”—but without the involvement or, in some cases, even the consent of the majority of Americans who now are privileged with these rights.

Thickening up Liberalism by declaring more and more rights thins out democracy by marking off more and more areas of life we aren’t allowed to govern or regulate for ourselves. Some will hail this as an unmitigated good—naturally, minorities, like blacks in the 60s and gays today, for whom liberal rights offer protection against potentially hostile majorities. Others view this as a disaster. The question is, what is the right balance between democracy and Liberalism? When does the creation of a new "right" do more harm to democratic process than good it offers to individuals?

The answer is not easy, and effects gay marriage as much as freedom from arbitrary government surveillance, the freedom to wear a Muslim headscarf, the right of communities to set standards for themselves by banning pornography or allowing school prayer--the list goes on.

*(I am using the term in the 19th Century philosophical sense, not the 21st Century partisan sense of “political left”)