"We often confuse democracy with freedom. The greatest good of government is liberty -- that is what our Declaration of Independence emphatically states. Simply implementing the "Will of the People" is no more noble, true, or decent than the will of a kind and wise autocrat: democracy has no value at all, except to help keep us free.
The world today shows the tension between freedom and democracy. Canada is a well functioning democracy. Yet, as Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn and other conservatives can attest, it is an intolerant and censorious democracy which denies its intellectual critics the right to speak. The United Kingdom is democratic. Yet Geert Wilders and Michael Savage have been kept out of the country, at different times, for "hate speech."
Speech and expression are not free in these democracies, so close to America in origin and in custom. The Netherlands is another land which shares our traditional values of free expression, and yet Geert Wilders is on trial for making statements disrespectful to Islam. The United Provinces of the Netherlands are every bit as democratic as Britain, Canada, or America -- but something odd and awful is happening. What?"
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