… is from page 90 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates:
Democracy and freedom are too often confounded.
DBx: Yes.
Democracy is not a synonym for freedom. Nor is democracy a sufficient condition for freedom. Indeed, democracy can be – and sometimes has been – an obstacle to freedom. Whatever the merits or demerits of each of two different things, they are not the same thing. One – democracy – is a means of making collective decisions; the other – freedom – is both a means (it encourages each of us to be of great service to others, yet on our own terms) and an end in itself.
