Democracy is a Radical Notion
Too often, Democracy is presented to us as the boring, moderate option, only chosen by conformists and the indecisive masses. I am here to tell you:
Democracy is not Moderate. Democracy is Radical.
Democracy is the last major political ideology to insist that legitimacy rises from the many and not the few.
Every other system - no matter how it dresses itself up - rests on the same grim foundation: that power must be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. Sometimes it is in the hands of The Party's Politburo, sometimes it's the Guardian Mullahs, sometimes a Noble Bloodline, sometimes it's the President-for-Life and his pathetic cadre of sycophants.
It doesn't matter what ideology props up Tyranny. The labels differ, but the structure is identical - a small group decides, and the rest of us obey. Strip away the slogans and you find the same contempt underneath: a profound distrust of humanity as a whole.
And that is how it has always been - in most places, and for most of human history. But Democracy is the rejection of that structure at its root.
Democracy is not tidy. It is not efficient. It is not comforting. It is a stubborn, defiant insistence that ordinary people - in all their conflicted ignorance, prejudice, generosity, and brilliance - are entitled to govern themselves. Not because they are perfect, but because they are human.
It assumes that the people are not livestock to be managed, nor children to be shielded from dangerous thoughts, but moral agents capable of judgment, disagreement, and correction.
There is nothing moderate about that.
And that is why Democracy and Freedom of Expression are inseparable. A system that depends on the people’s consent must allow the people to speak - to argue, to offend, to be wrong, to be foolish, to be alarming. Either you trust the people or you do not.
Democracy cannot survive on curated truths and sanitized discourse. It requires exposure to bad ideas so that better ones can defeat them in the open. It requires citizens who can hear something repulsive and reject it for themselves.
Authoritarian systems have no need for Freedom of Expression. They do not require educated citizens, only compliant ones. They do not need critical thinking, only discipline. Speech is dangerous to them precisely because it invites comparison, skepticism, and refusal. So the Authoritarians of all colors regulate it - not for any public good, but for their own survival.
Here in America, Democracy is strained. The public sometimes chooses poorly. Demagogues rise. Falsehood spreads. But the system is showing its cracks precisely because it allows us to see them.
The answer to bad democratic outcomes is not to abandon democracy - it is to defend it more fiercely. A system that permits error is the only system that permits correction.
I know that the temptation, in moments of fear and frustration, is to reach for guardians - to wish for someone stronger, smarter, cleaner to take the wheel so that you do not have to confront it yourself. That temptation is ancient, but it has always led to the same place: The surrender of voice. The criminalization of dissent. The quiet suffocation of truth.
Democracy asks something harder of us. It asks us to believe that people, together, can learn - can improve. That exposure to ideas does not inevitably corrupt. That sunlight does more good than silence. That freedom - including the freedom to create and consume shocking, offensive, unsettling ideas - is not a threat to legitimacy, but its foundation.
Democracy is not easy and it is not perfect. Democracy rejects the fantasy that some flawless leader will come along to save us. It does not falsely promise us good outcomes every time.
What it promises is something far more radical: that no one gets to rule us instead of us - and that includes ruling our minds.
