Research Korner: Liberal Democracy

Liberalism The tendency within liberal thought to diminish the significance of virtue in descriptions of, and prescriptions for, political life is well known. It is less remarked that a coherent and comprehensive account of politics, liberal or otherwise, cannot succeed without giving virtue its due. To be sure, the leading theorists of liberalism adduce strong practical and theoretical reasons for, and display considerable resourcefulness in, circumscribing virtue's role. Yet the best of the liberal tradition exhibits an illuminating ambivalence and reveals a range of instructive opinions about the claims of virtue and how they can best be respected. This can be seen even and especially in that part of the tradition famous for getting along without virtue (Berkowitz 1999, 105). The truth, according to the new liberals, is more complicated. Although it does place an emphasis on formal procedures, is primarily concerned with institutional arrangements, and does cherish the toleration of a range of practices and conceptions of the good life, liberalism is, contrary to its communitarian critics as well as some of its most influential champions, a doctrine containing a partial vision of the good and a compelling account of decent character. The liberal rejoinder sometimes gave the impression that liberalism had weathered the storm of communitarian criticism without compromising its basic principles or backing away from its fundamental commitments. This impression, however, is misleading (Kloppenberg 1998, 12).    In fact, the liberalism that the most prominent liberals in the academy defend today reflects a chastened understanding. The communitarian challenge spurred liberals to articulate a richer and more flexible liberalism that is less embarrassed to acknowledge its dependence on institutions, practices, and beliefs falling beyond the range of the liberal theorist's special expertise and the liberal regime's assigned jurisdiction. This more reflective and self-conscious liberalism is also better able to recognize its limitations and thus take measures to compensate for its weaknesses and disadvantages (Levin-Waldman 1996, 103). Restraint in liberals in connection to virtue reflects a sound insight, because within the intellectual framework of liberalism virtue is vulnerable to persuasive theoretical and practical criticism yet remains indispensable to a complete account of free and democratic politics. Compared to the ambivalences that distinguish earlier liberal political theory, the failure to be embarrassed by the problem of virtue that marks much contemporary thought betrays a loss of understanding and balance. Liberalism has good reasons for seeking to diminish the significance to politics of virtue but betrays a tendency to take this economizing to an extreme by denying or forgetting virtue. The recognition that the real tension is not between liberalism and virtue but, rather, one that arises within liberalism about how to sustain the necessary virtues should provoke among liberals a tinge of embarrassment. Such embarrassment, however, is no disgrace. It may even provide an auspicious point of departure for the understanding of liberalism's virtue. Liberals elevated individual freedom over the acceptance of imposed hierarchy. They conceived of freedom, however, not as license but as enlightened self interest (Rawls 1996, 86).   Exercising liberal freedom requires the disposition to find one's true good and to choose the proper means to it, which is the meaning of prudence. Liberals elevated the production and consumption of material goods over the acceptance of poverty and asceticism. They conceived of the good life, however, not as gluttony but as moderation in the enjoyment of pleasures and as a proper respect for the different preferences of others, which is the meaning of temperance (Young 1996, 23). Liberals elevated the private life over the earlier demand of theocrats and republicans that individual citizens can find fulfillment only in and thus must sacrifice themselves for, the good of the church or the state. They conceived of the liberal polity, however, as a legal and moral order necessary not only to protect them from each other and adjudicate their conflicts but also to enable them to achieve their goals. The liberal polity could survive only through the faithfulness of its citizens and their persistent loyalty to it regardless of the difficulties that might arise, which is the meaning of fortitude. Finally, liberals elevated the rights of every citizen over the privileges and preferences of elite. They conceived of such rights, however, as bounded by the firm command that individuals must render to God and to their neighbors what is their due, which is the meaning of justice. The virtues of liberalism in history have been political, economic, and social, which explains both their enduring appeal and the vulnerability of contemporary liberalism to diverse forms of criticism. Liberal ideas are simultaneously attacked today by conservatives outside the university and by radicals inside it. These different critics ascribe to liberalism distinctly different meanings that often rest on misunderstandings of the complex historical dynamics that have shaped politics and culture (Kautz 1995, 35). Liberalism gives importance to individual freedom. Liberalism is accepted throughout the world, philosophers throughout history have seen it as a very important belief. There are many forms of liberalism since it allows and supports varying beliefs and ideas of what should be a good life. Values and Ideals of Liberalism Liberalism is a political ideology whose central theme is a commitment to the individual and to the construction of a society in which individuals can satisfy their interests or achieve fulfillment. The core values of liberalism are individualism, rationalism, freedom, justice and toleration. The liberal belief that human beings are, first and foremost, individuals, endowed with reason, implies that each individual should enjoy the maximum possible freedom consistent with a like freedom for all. However, although individuals are born equal in the sense that they are of equal moral worth and should enjoy formal equality and equal opportunities, liberals generally stress that they should be rewarded according to their differing levels of talent or willingness to work, and therefore favor the principle of meritocracy (Richardson 2001, 72). A liberal society is characterized by diversity and pluralism and is organized politically around the twin values of consent and constitutionalism, combined to form the structures of liberal democracy. Significant differences nevertheless exist between classical liberalism and modern liberalism. Classical liberalism is distinguished by a belief in a minimal state, whose function is limited to the maintenance of domestic order and personal security. Classical liberals emphasize that human beings are essentially self-interested and largely self-sufficient; as far as possible, people should be responsible for their own lives and circumstances (Heywood 2000, 61).               As an economic doctrine, classical liberalism extols the merits of a self-regulating market in which government intervention is seen as both unnecessary and damaging. Classical liberal ideas are expressed in certain natural rights theories and utilitarianism, and provide one of the cornerstones of libertarianism. Modern liberalism exhibits a more sympathetic attitude towards the state, born out of the belief that unregulated capitalism merely produces new forms of injustice. State intervention can therefore enlarge liberty by safeguarding individuals from the social evils that blight their existence. Whereas classical liberals understand freedom in ‘negative’ terms, as the absence of constraints upon the individual, modern liberals link freedom to personal development and self-realization. This creates clear overlaps between modern liberalism and social democracy (Carter 1999, 20). Liberalism has undoubtedly been the most powerful ideological force shaping the Western political tradition. Indeed, some portray liberalism as the ideology of the industrialized West, and identify it with Western civilization in general. Liberalism was the product of the breakdown of feudalism and the growth, in its place, of a market or capitalist society. Early liberalism certainly reflected the aspirations of a rising industrial middle class, and liberalism and capitalism have been closely linked ever since. In its earliest form, liberalism was a political doctrine. It attacked absolutism and feudal privilege, instead advocating constitutional and, later, representative government. In the nineteenth century, classical liberalism, in the form of economic liberalism, extolled the virtues of laissez-faire capitalism and condemned all forms of government intervention (Lent 1998, 11).   From the late nineteenth century onwards a form of social liberalism emerged, characteristic of modern liberalism, which looked more favorably upon welfare reform and economic intervention. The attraction of liberalism is its unrelenting commitment to individual freedom, reasoned debate and to balance within diversity. Indeed, it has become fashionable to portray liberalism not simply as an ideology but as a meta-ideology, that is, as a body of rules that lays down he grounds upon which political and ideological debate can take place. This reflects the belief that liberalism gives priority to the right’ over ‘the good. In other words, liberalism strives to establish conditions in which people and groups can pursue the good life as each defines it, but it does not prescribe or try to promote any particular notion of what is good (Molle 2003, 123.). Criticisms of liberalism nevertheless come from various directions. Some have argued that, in defending capitalism, liberalism attempts to legitimize unequal class power and so constitutes a form of bourgeois ideology. Radical feminists point to the linkage between liberalism and patriarchy, which is rooted in the tendency to construe the individual on the basis of an essentially male model of self-sufficiency, thereby encouraging women to be like men. Communitarians condemn liberalism for failing to provide a moral basis for social order and collective endeavor, arguing that the liberal society is a recipe for unrestrained egoism and greed, and so is ultimately self-defeating (Sterba 2001, 96). Liberalism values individualism, rationalism, freedom, justice and toleration. Liberalism makes sure that it a country or a group of people the values of individualism, rationalism, freedom, justice and toleration would be the primary concern.  Individualism stresses the importance for a country to have independence and self-reliance. Rationalism focuses on using reason as the main source of knowledge or the primary justification for anything. Freedom thrives on the idea of being free. Justice sums up the idea of moral rightness that is based on concepts like ethics, rationality, law and fairness. Toleration is the concept of creating practices that will disallow discrimination of ethnic and religious ideas. Democracy Democracy is confused with liberalism or constitutionalism or social equality or national independence; it may be taken to mean majority rule or minority rights. The meaning varies with the time and place. Democracy may be seen as a sub branch of equality. Equality of rights spelled liberalism, equality of votes democracy, equality of goods socialism. Other equalizing demands came from women and ethnic minorities. People who wish to define democracy as a social principle, broader than a political process, usually seem to mean more nearly social equality. But an egalitarian society could be politically most undemocratic, in the sense of being ruled by a despot or an oligarchy. Such was evidently the approximate condition of a peasant society without class distinctions, ruled by a strong king, with no elected legislature. This seems a rather normal pattern for a pre modernized people (Reynolds 2002, 106). Russia, widely considered to have had the most despotic government in Europe, was socially in some ways more democratic than Western Europe: there were few social gradations, and the vast majority was equal if only in their servitude. The extensive literature on the subject of democracy frequently presents the argument that democracy depends on there being social inequality. Equality of condition is not what the masses of people want; they want the opportunity to rise, and there must be a top to which to rise (Schaffer 1998, 81).    When unlimited equality of opportunity is granted, the result is usually a most unequal distribution of wealth; the more talented or aggressive clamber to the top over the bodies of the less advantaged and thus create a plutocracy. Such was the case in the greatest example of successful democracy, the United States of America. If democracy was said to be a failure, even a disaster, others called it a fraud; the two criticisms perhaps contradicted each other, since it is hard to see how something that means nothing can be a menace. But the charge of fraudulence often really was saying that the system was not democratic at all. Democracy meant the decidedly limited privilege of choosing every few years between two political oligarchies not all that different in the short term, structural, cultural, and international factors that affect the prospects for building a stable democracy cannot be changed profoundly (Stivers 2000, 76). With rapid economic growth, poverty can be alleviated significantly in a decade or a generation, but not in a few years. In any case, rapid economic growth does not automatically transform values in a way that mitigates religious, national, or ethnic conflicts, which often prove more intractable than class conflict in the face of economic growth. Authoritarian political heritages and cultures may give rise to more democratic values, but this process usually takes a substantial time. International factors that support democracy may change in a relatively short time period, but democratic actors in a divided society undergoing a process of democratization can hardly set about changing the international environment in the short term. In contrast, political institutions can be altered to increase the likelihood of managing conflict democratically. Thus, to the extent that democrats can proactively take steps to improve the prospects for democracy, institutional design is one of their key tools (Stromberg 1996, 14).    Democracy can be sustained even in countries that face daunting structural and cultural obstacles: poverty, inequality, and deep ethnic, national, or religious divisions. Structural and cultural factors help shape prospects for democracy, but a healthy dose of optimism regarding the potential for democracy under even adverse conditions has emerged. Democracy is first and foremost a matter of making collective decisions. Not only are there different ways of making collective decisions, however. There are also different ways of conceptualizing the collectivity whose decisions those represent. Varied though they may otherwise be, theories of liberal democracy necessarily have certain things in common. All theories of liberal democracy necessarily rest on Enlightenment premises of individual autonomy. Furthermore, all theories of liberal democracy necessarily require systematic responsiveness to popular wishes, in ways which make them fundamentally preference-respecting. There are however many different kinds of preferences and correspondingly many different ways of respecting them (Goodin 2005, 33). Different models of democracy will be better at providing certain sorts of respect for certain sorts of preferences than others. Which model of democracy liberal democrats want to adopt therefore depends on which sorts of preferences they want to accord which sort of respect. Some forms of democracy are purely aggregative, just adding up people's votes. Merely registering preferences which are what tick-the-box forms of aggregative democracy would have people do stops well short of genuinely respecting preferences. That has people respecting the mark on the ballot, rather than the person or the reasoning for which it stands (Dryzek 1996, 26). In a democracy everyone should be equal before the law. Everyone should also have an equal chance to wield power. In a democracy all citizens of a country are given freedoms and liberties. The freedoms and liberties are controlled by a constitution. A democracy usually features a majority rule where the most number of people wins a vote, debate and any other situation that involves decision making. Values and Ideals of Democracy The rule of law, so conceived, made law a more effective tool. Officials would enforce rules uniformly and those subject to it would modify their behavior in the light of those rules. This made the law more effective and, for most people, self-enforcing. The rule of law is good law in the same sense as a knife is good. Whether harm results depends on what the law, like the knife, is used for. This limited concept of the rule of law does not seek to incorporate the other enlightenment values of democracy, citizenship, and human rights. It does not eschew these values but allows them to be defined more independently and their presence or absence to be determined more reliably. This does not mean that the other values cannot be embraced wholeheartedly. Rather, it means that there are a number of values for assessing the worth of a legal order of which the rule of law is one (Vanhanen 2003, 88). The lack of one or more of the other values might well justify experts in overthrowing a legal order that had the one virtue of exhibiting the rule of law. The lack of democracy will generally justify the replacing of that order with a democratic one, although a democracy with no rule of law may generate at least as much misery as an autocracy with the rule of law. In a democracy, the people rule. Popular sovereignty implies that all minimally competent adults come together as one body to make decisions about the laws and policies that are to regulate their lives together (Zifcak 2005, 72).   Each citizen has a vote in the processes by which the decisions are made and each has the opportunity to participate in the deliberations over what courses of action are to be followed. Each citizen has the right to participate as an equal. Political equality implies equality among citizens in the process of decision making. Of course there are different kinds of equality here. Political equality assigns each citizen an equal vote and requires that decisions be made by a majority. Political equality includes the more robust requirement that citizens be equal in the control they exercise over the decision-making process (Inoguchi, Keane & Newman1998, 35). Each citizen has the right to an opportunity to express his or her opinions and supporting reasons to every other citizen as well as a right and duty to hear a wide spectrum of views on subjects of public concern. Each has a right, as well as a duty to participate in open and fair discussion. These are the ideals of democracy. These ideals are partly realized in features of modern democratic societies. One-person one-vote is observed in the process of electing representatives to the legislative assembly; anyone may run for election to public office; in elections, a number of political parties compete for political power by advocating alternative visions of the society; the political campaigns of candidates and parties consist in large part in discussion and argument over the worth of these opposing views, and everyone is permitted to have a say in this process; and the society tolerates and often encourages vigorous debate on all issues of public interest. All the features provide evidence of commitment to democratic ideals in contemporary political communities. These aspects of modern democratic societies represent great accomplishments, but they are not the last word on democracy (Norris 1999, 126).   The aspects of modern democracies constitute a kind of minimal conception of democracy in modern societies. Democracy embodies moral ideals to which most people in modern society have a deep and abiding allegiance. These ideals go beyond the minimal conception of democracy. In particular the ideals of political equality and of rational social discussion among citizens seem to require a more substantive equality than the practice of one-person one-vote. A society may be minimally democratic while not fully living up to democratic ideals (Schaffer 2000, 100). Consider a citizen who has a vote and is not forbidden to say something in the process of deliberation. But suppose that because of poverty, lack of education, and lack of organization this citizen is unable to understand the issues involved in the decision making or have a clear idea of what her interests are or how to articulate them to others. Such a citizen is not the political equal of the citizen who is wealthy, well educated, whose interests and points of view are supported by organization, and who is able to understand issues as well as clarify and articulate his interests. A society that permits this kind of inequality may well be democratic in the minimal sense described above, but most people would believe that it does not live up to the democratic ideals of political equality and participation in rational social deliberation. The ideals of democracy suggest that citizens ought to play a very substantial role in the governance of their society. The trouble is that the ideals appear quite unrealistic in a modern democratic state (Christiano 1996, 42). Political sovereignty and equality comprises the ideals of democracy. In political sovereignty people can come together as one body to decide on certain laws or policies that can affect their well being. In political sovereignty everyone can participate in deliberations on what decisions and courses of actions should be followed.  Political equality means that everyone has an equal vote and majority will be the one ruling. In political equality everyone has an opportunity to express their opinion and give reasons for their opinion. It also gives them the right to gather views on subjects that involve public concern. Liberal-Democracy is an unstable compound The meaning and manifestation of liberal democracy as practiced in the West have taken many forms. Differences can emerge in the institutional architecture, the political culture, and even some of the fundamental principles that inspire them. Diverse, at times very different, principles, rules and decision-making procedures coexist under the common label of democracy, even under the label of liberal democracy, and these in turn influence the significant aspects of the political system: government characteristics, the nature of the party system, and/or the degree of administrative centralization (Callan 1997, 9). The various forms that liberal democracy has assumed have always presented very different aspects and characteristics, and it is quite probable that the democratizations presently underway will add others. Indeed, the meaning of liberal democracy and the liberal-democratic discourse has been an ever-developing and ever-changing one, and it may be unrealistic to expect contemporary notions of democracy or liberal democracy to be any more final than any of the earlier constructs. In much of the region rights essential to the effective practice of liberal democracy defined even in narrow procedural term  freedom of opinion, expression, speech, assembly and association within the rule of law; the right to cast a free vote and stand for office; competitive, free and fair elections (Austin 1995,  52).    Since the end of the nineteenth century the principal vehicle of democratic aspirations in the modern world has been the liberal democratic system of representative government, with its electoral institutions, its mass party organizations, and its parliamentary conventions. The forms of totalitarian or populistic democracy that sought to defeat it in the twentieth century, whether Communist or fascist, have now been thoroughly vanquished. And social democratic aspirations have been just as thoroughly incorporated, however imperfectly, within liberal democracy, encoded in the rights of trade unions, the forms of corporatist intermediation, and the systems of public provision and economic regulation characteristic of the advanced liberal democracies (Moran & Parry 1994, 6). In this sense it is fair to say that the world is witnessing an end to ideology in the normative sense. Marxist socialism, liberalism's most prominent ideological antagonist, has largely passed from the historical scene. And liberal democracy has proven itself, as a matter of historical durability but also as a matter of any reasonable conception of justice, to be the most compelling and thus valid way of organizing public offices and distributing civil and political liberties at the level of the nation-state. But liberal democracy has also proven itself to be a deeply flawed and increasingly illegitimate form of public authority. Its illegitimacy has not resulted in a generalized political crisis of legitimacy. In the places where it exists it is likely to continue to exist, in however debilitated and traduced a fashion, and this is a good thing. The extent to which it recommends itself precisely by virtue of its antithesis to outright barbarity betrays it’s very minimal, and hardly inspiring, ideological foundations (Chan 2002, 15).   It is worth emphasizing that edification is not the principal political good, and it hardly counts against liberal democracy that it does provide for a minimum of personal security and material well-being. But recent events surely pose questions about the health and effectiveness of a regime that rests on such slim foundations and inspires such minimal civic confidence. Liberal democracy clearly had much to recommend it. The popular enthusiasms on which totalitarian regimes had been carried into power certainly suggested that a lower level of mass participation might be beneficial. The grandiose ideological objectives sought by totalitarian power seemed to recommend a more pragmatic, indeed instrumental, political culture, in which citizens acted like calculating political consumers and political elites like savvy entrepreneurs (Digeser 1995, 56). A liberal, representative democracy seemed most consistent with civility and political stability. It did not offer grand schemes of existential fulfillment, but it offered a modicum of comfort and security. It was not immune to problems, but it surely seemed advisable to view these problems realistically, with a dear sense of what was possible and what impossible. Western liberal democracy, and the democratic theory that supported it, enjoyed a quarter-century of unparalleled success.  Liberal democracy is not to everybody's liking, least of all those on whom it imposes restraints of office. To be acclaimed by those who wish to pay homage is music to the ear of politicians, but to lose power by popular vote or after a fixed term of office strikes a very different and discordant note. Politicians then begin to suborn the constitution, corrupt the voting system and muzzle their opponents. They seek to entrench themselves in power, fearing that any change of regime is likely to insist on the need to punish past misdeeds as a necessary base to the new politics of reform (Isaac 1998, 11).   Although the wish to bury the past may also be there, the capacity to punish is indispensable to the restoration of justice, and governments which fear retribution will do everything they can to avert it. Even if a wide-ranging ethical autonomy is intrinsic to political virtue, its free development may often pull against the civic responsibility those same virtues entail. Autonomous reflection does not necessarily lead everyone to a way of life in which civic engagement has an impressively prominent place. Political education in a liberal democracy will discourage civic alienation. But it cannot foreclose the outcome without repudiating its necessary commitment to individual as well as collective self-rule (Greenawalt 1995, 89). The liberal democracy worth having will also respect the right to live in some ways that renounce the stringent ideal of autonomy intrinsic to political virtue. The claims of democratic virtue and liberal pluralism can in general be reconciled. But it is a much more tense and precarious reconciliation than we might like it to be. The marriage of liberalism and democracy is a turbulent one, and its turbulence is inevitably manifest in man’s educational thought and practice. There is the permanent possibility that law may be enacted or administered in ways that betray the fundamental values of liberal democracy, that institutions other than the law may be implicated in the same betrayal or that received rituals may cease to be a fitting expression of adherence to those values. A liberal democracy cannot merely be hospitable to the exercise of critical reason as it is open, say, to the virtues that support certain religious or aesthetic ideals (Barkawi & Laffey 2001, 85). Liberal-democracy is an unstable compound; the two elements it conjoins pull in opposite directions, for the values and ideals upheld by liberalism are at odds with the values and principles of democracy. Liberal Democracy has the elements of both liberalism and democracy, each element has a tendency of not complementing each other. It results to chaos due to the differences in the principles that are used. The values of liberalism often times create issues with the values of democracy.   References Austin, D (ed.) 1995, Liberal democracy in non-western states, Paragon House, New York, 48-54.   Barkawi, T & Laffey, M (eds.) 2001, Democracy, liberalism, and war: Rethinking the democratic peace debate, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 76-86.   Berkowitz, P 1999, Virtue and the making of modern liberalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 105.   Callan, E 1997, Creating citizens: Political education and liberal democracy, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 9.   Carter, I 1999, A measure of freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 16-23.   Chan, S 2002, Liberalism, democracy and development, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 15.   Christiano, T 1996, The rule of the many: Fundamental issues in democratic theory, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 36-42.   Digeser, P 1995, Our politics, Our selves? 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Kloppenberg, JT 1998, The virtues of liberalism, Oxford University Press, New York, 11-14.   Lent, A (ed.) 1998, New political thought: An introduction, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 9 – 16.     Levin-Waldman, OM 1996, Reconceiving Liberalism: Dilemmas of contemporary liberal public policy, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 101-109.   Molle, W 2003, Global economic institutions, Routledge, New York., 118-123.   Moran, M & Parry, G (eds.) 1994, Democracy and democratization, Routledge, New York, 6.   Norris, P (ed.) 1999, Critical citizens: Global support for democratic government, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 126.   Rawls, J 1996, Political liberalism, Columbia University Press, New York, 67-90.   Reynolds, A (ed.) 2002, The architecture of democracy: Constitutional design, conflict management, and democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 106.   Richardson, JL 2001, Contending liberalisms in world politics: Ideology and power, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 70 – 80.   Schaffer, FC 2000, Democracy in translation: Understanding politics in an unfamiliar culture, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 93 – 106.   Schaffer, FC 1998, Democracy in translation: Understanding politics in an unfamiliar culture, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 81 – 84.   Sterba, JP (ed.) 2001, Social and political philosophy: Contemporary perspectives, Routledge, London, 92 – 98.   Stivers, C (ed.) 2000, Democracy, bureaucracy and the study of administration, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 76-80.   Stromberg, RN 1996, Democracy: A short, analytical history, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, 14.   Vanhanen, T 2003, Democratization: A comparative analysis of 170 countries, Routledge, New York, 80-94.   Young, JP 1996, Reconsidering American liberalism: The troubled odyssey of the liberal idea, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 21-24.   Zifcak, S (ed.) 2005, Globalization and the rule of law, Routledge, New York, 65-73. Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Liberal-Democracy’ Is An Unstable Compound; The Two Elements It Conjoins Pull in Opposite Directions, For The Values And Ideals Upheld By Liberalism Are At Odds With The Values And Principles Of Democracy. Discuss

Liberalism The tendency within liberal thought to diminish the significance of virtue in descriptions of, and prescriptions for, politi...