Democracy and Liberty
The word democracy is one of the most abused and misused terms in modern political discourse. I’ll write up a bit more on the matter soon (I’ve still got to post responses to the other two questions posed to me — see just below), but in the meantime I highly recommend Fareed Zakaria’s new book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. I don’t endorse or agree with everything in the book, but I can say that it’s really quite good. Not only is it elegantly written, it’s insightful and demonstrates a willingness to grapple with hard questions and to look for the evidence by which one could test a variety of controversial theses. Zakaria is not only a good journalist, but he’s a first rate political scientist, as well.