strengths of Liberal Democracy
This essay will deal mainly with the origins of Liberal Democracy, and will say only a little about its current prospects. I turn to the history, however, because I believe we can learn from it a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democray and therefore its prospects. Indeed, what I wish to sress is a certain source of strength that has helped free governement survive in the long competition with ungree government in modern times. That source of strength is free speech. I want to emphasize the roleof free speech as an instrument of self-government. Free speech has other aspects- for instance, its function in promoting the private concerns or personal growth of the individal. In this present inquiry, however, I am thinking of its public function as the way in which liberal democracy enlists the intelligence of its citizens in solving common problems. I am concerned, in short, not with the moral value of liberal democracy nor with the individuals right of free expression, but rather with the utility to the modern democratic state of government by discussion.In modern political thought this public function of free speech and free discussion has been perceived and appraised with favour by men of many differen
His earnest and central concern was to make the greatest possible use of the intellectual and moral resources of all citizens. Rather like the economist who looks for that economic system in which the material resources of a society will be so allocated as to maximise the national product, Mill soguht that political system which would so utilise these less tangible resources as to elicit the greatest possible enlightenment regarding public policy. He critisized authoritarian government for "not bringing into sufficient exercise the individual faculties, moral, intellectual and active, of the people." He saw in representative democracy the means by which these faculties would be utilised by opening office-holding to all classes of private citizens, but "above all, by the utmost possible publicity and liberty of discussion, whereby not merely a few individuals in succession, but the whole public, are made, to a certain extent, participants in the government." t schools. All share in some degree the great tradition of modern rationalism. I can suggest the thrust of the basic analysis and the spread of its advocacy over time by mentioning the work of a few of the more notable. This body of though includes- indeed, I should say, it starts with- John Milton's immortal rhetoric in defense of freedom of the press in Areopagitica (1644) It includes Burke's portrait of the eighteenth century Parliament as a "deliberate assembly" guided by "the general reason of the whole" and Walter Bagehot's analysis, a hundred years later, of the long-run survival value of what he first termed "government by discussion". On the American side
Some common words found in the essay are:
Representative Government, Liberal Democracy, Justice Holmes, John Milton's, Walter Bagehot's, Thomas Jefferson, , Stuart Mill, free speech, liberal democracy, public policy, public function, discussion experience, government discussion, free discussion, representative democracy, source strength, intellectual moral,
Approximate Word count = 1098
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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