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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (21102)	7/29/2012 4:32:04 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

No freedom and democracy are two different things. They both help preserve each other, but having one doesn't give you the other. Democracy can hurt freedom, and often does, I say "they help preserve each other", because I making a statement relative to other situations. Dictatorships, monarchies etc. are likely to harm freedom even more, while anarchy isn't stable (some one tends to grab power), and even while it still exist you tend to lack protection for your freedom (the different people trying to grab power will abuse you and your freedom, well before one of them finally defeats the others and grabs power. As Churchill put it "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried" So yes democracy, in a relative sense, helps protect freedom. You can be free without democracy, and you can be unfree with it. Democracy tends to serve your freedom, but it isn't freedom itself its a different end goal and a more important one If I can't vote but I am left free and secure, that's better than if I can vote, but the vote results infringements on my freedom and my rights. Putting democracy above all other goals and values would imply that its perfectly ok if your abused, as long as the majority supports it. But in a sense that's all besides the point, as restrictions on free speech, and in the long run even huge and ever expanding government, isn't just harmful to liberty/freedom, its also harmful to democracy. And getting back to the point under discussion, bigger government encourages more corporate influence over the government, and enables it to do more harm.