Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Democracy vs. Freedom

I just finished Fareed Zakaria's book The Future of Freedom. He talks about a subject I wondered about when traveling in Arab countries this spring and is relevant to Iraq today. What is the line in a country between democratically developed laws and minority liberties in a country. What if I lived in Morocco (or Iraq), and a democratic election brought about fundamentalist leaders that imposed strict rules on society (e.g. Sharia Law)?

The book talks about the difference between democracy and individual liberty that is not widely understood in the US. We tend to think of democracy and individual liberty as linked, but as Fareed points out, this is not necessarily the case. Interestingly, the book says the best way to advance liberal democracy is through creating constitutional liberty for a society which will then advance into democracy. Democracy, given to an illiberal society, only leads to fascism (WWII Germany) or authoritarianism (Russia). It's something to think about regarding Iraq.

2 comments:

Tom said...

Kind of deep for a web blog isn't it? We go from Hot Dog Races to figuring out how to give individual liberties to the Arab world.

Michael & Sarah said...

The deep stuff is going to hit the fan when I break a story on a supposed plant-lover who tortures them without water and sunlight!