origional Publication at American Thinker
Democracy is widely spoken of today as though it were a moral achievement in itself -- an end rather than a means, a virtue rather than a procedure. It is invoked with reverence, defended with passion, and exported with missionary zeal. Yet this reverence obscures a simple but essential truth: democracy, by itself, has no moral content. It is merely a method for making collective decisions. Like any tool, its value depends entirely on what it is used to do -- and, just as importantly, what it is prevented from doing.
History offers no shortage of examples where democratic processes have produced outcomes that were not merely unwise, but profoundly unjust. Majorities have voted to segregate, to confiscate, to censor, to conscript, and to suppress. At various times and places, democratic majorities have endorsed slavery, ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, and wars of conquest. None of these policies were redeemed by the fact that they were approved by a vote. Fifty-one percent of the population does not acquire moral authority simply by being numerically superior.
The confusion arises when democracy is mistaken for liberty. The two are not the same, and they are often in tension. Democracy answers the question, who decides? Liberty answers the question, what may not be decided at all? A society that allows everything to be voted upon has already abandoned the very concept of rights. Rights, by definition, are not permissions granted by a majority; they are protections against the majority.
This distinction was well understood by the architects of the American constitutional order. They did not set out to create a pure democracy, and they said so plainly. What they created instead was a constitutional republic -- one in which popular participation was constrained by law, structure, and principle. Elections determined officeholders, but not first principles. Majorities could choose representatives, but those representatives were forbidden from infringing certain individual rights, regardless of how popular such infringements might be.
That design was neither accidental nor naïve. It was the product of hard-earned historical knowledge. The Founders were students of history, not romantics intoxicated by slogans. They understood that power does not become harmless when exercised by many rather than by few. A lynch mob does not become just because it is large, nor does confiscation become moral because it is popular.
America’s enduring significance as an icon of liberty lies not in the frequency of its elections but in the architecture of its restraints. The Bill of Rights does not begin with an affirmation of democratic will; it begins with prohibitions -- Congress shall make no law. These words do not elevate the majority; they shackle it. They recognize that the greatest threat to freedom in any society is not merely tyranny from above, but oppression from all directions, including from one’s neighbors.
The modern tendency to equate democracy with virtue has led to a steady erosion of these restraints. When every issue is reframed as a matter of “the will of the people,” the space for individual liberty shrinks accordingly. Property rights become conditional. Speech becomes negotiable. Due process becomes an inconvenience. Each of these losses is justified not on moral grounds, but on numerical ones.
What is particularly dangerous about this trend is its self-righteousness. Policies that would once have been recognized as coercive are now defended as democratic. The language of rights is replaced by the language of outcomes. Those who resist are accused not of defending liberty, but of opposing democracy itself -- as if democracy were the ultimate moral standard rather than a procedural mechanism.
Yet the test of a free society is not how efficiently it registers public opinion, but how effectively it protects unpopular individuals. Freedom of speech matters most when speech is despised. Property rights matter most when envy is widespread. Due process matters most when emotions run high. These are precisely the moments when democratic impulses are most likely to collide with liberty -- and when constitutional limits matter most.
The American system, at its best, recognized human nature as it is, not as we might wish it to be. It assumed that people are capable of wisdom, but also of passion, prejudice, and shortsightedness. It therefore divided power, slowed decision-making, and elevated principles above preferences. These features are often criticized today as undemocratic, which is precisely the point. They were meant to be.
Democracy, stripped of constitutional restraint, becomes little more than a counting exercise -- a competition for control over the machinery of coercion. Whoever wins the vote gains the power to compel obedience from those who lose. In such a system, politics ceases to be about justice and becomes a struggle over spoils. Groups organize not to defend rights, but to capture power, knowing that today’s majority can impose its will without limit.
Liberty offers a different vision. It does not promise that outcomes will be equal, popular, or even comfortable. It promises something far more demanding: that individuals will be secure in their lives, their property, and their choices, regardless of shifting public moods. This security is not an obstacle to self-government; it is the precondition for it. People can meaningfully participate in public life only when they are free from arbitrary power, including the arbitrary power of the majority.
None of this requires hostility toward democracy. Voting has its place, and a vital one. It allows peaceful transitions of power. It provides feedback to those who govern. It offers a mechanism for resolving disputes without violence. But these are practical virtues, not moral ones. Democracy is valuable because it is useful, not because it is inherently righteous.
America’s greatness has never rested on the sanctification of majority rule. It has rested on the radical idea that there are things no majority may do -- that the individual is not a mere instrument of collective desire, and that liberty is not a favor bestowed by numbers. When that idea is forgotten, democracy becomes not a safeguard of freedom, but a means of dismantling it -- one vote at a time.
In the end, the choice is not between democracy and liberty, but between democracy constrained by principle and democracy unbound by it. History leaves little doubt about which one preserves freedom, and which one merely redistributes power until nothing remains worth preserving.
Jim Cardoza is the author of The Moral Superiority of Liberty and the founder of LibertyPen.com. Read more of his essays there.
Image: Honore Daumier
