The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad | Fareed Zakaria

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad | Fareed Zakaria | The Optimistic Jew

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The Future of Free...

	The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad Fareed Zakaria, 2003 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 139 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Truly remarkable book

I read this book with great intensity and interest, and, to my pleasant surprise, its line of reasoning was deep and its arguments logic and convincing. One has to be open minded and follow the author's logic to truly understand the meaning of the book, specially if you are an American or European (I am a Latin American from Panama).

I truly and completely agree with the author's thesis and conclussions: 1)Democracy is not the same as liberty (libertarians have long recognized this); 2) Democracy and Liberty only recently merged; 3) In countries with a weak tradition of liberty (that is, property rights and protection against the religious, state and social oppressions) are not good candidates for democracy.

Democracy is by definition, "the rule of the people". In countries with a lack of checks and balances, democracy runs the risk of becoming the "rule of the many against the minority", or the "tyranny of the mayority". The author explains how tyrants like Hitler came to power through the popular vote. How some dictatorships were far more tolerant and respectful of individual rights than democratic rule subsequently were. And how tyrants use the democratic process to reach power and then destroy the checks and balances to consolidate power. These events leads the author, correctly in my view, to conclude that while democracy is on the rise all over the world, liberty and freedom is in retreat. He calls this the rise of "illiberal democracy", a truly frightening prospect.

It's an outstanding book, I have read it twice, and recommend it to people with a passion for geopolitics and a reasonable understanding of current affairs. Its the best book I have read this year.

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The Optimistic Jew

Constitutionalize before you democratize. This is the essential theme of this book, which is destined to become a classic similar to Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". It is a call for constitutional democracy over Majoritarian democracy. When democracy is adopted before constitutional protections of inalienable individual rights are internalized the result is Hitler in Germany and Hamas in Palestine (both democratically elected). If the thesis of this book had been internalized by American policy makers some of the current mess in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East might have been avoided. The lessons of this book must also be internalized by Israel if Israel's constitutional democracy is to be strengthened in the future (a point I make in my own book "The Optimistic Jew"). This is also a necessity in the globalized age wherein the rapid rate of change requires the ever-growing empowerment of the individual.

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Great book! Can't believe was written BEFORE 9/11,

Great book! Can't believe was written BEFORE 9/11, too bad the Bush Admin. didn't agree with its major premises, we would not be in the international mess we are in today!

Worth reading, but not uncritically

The topic is important, and timely in our nation and the world. However, having read the book as well as dozens of Amazon reviews, I want to comment as follows.

This is a big picture book, ranging over a wide range of cases and eras that may or may not always be accurately described or correctly interpreted. The brush-strokes are very wide. While I agree with his key propositions (about the relationships between constitutional liberalism and democracy), this book is not definitive; he argues the points well but does not prove them. At best he is starting (actually, re-starting) an ages-old discussion that should be brought to the attention of the broad public. A valuable task, for which I am grateful.

As noted, I read many other readers' comments about this book, and noted that only a few (I recall two) mention the author's methods (quality of evidence and methods of reaching conclusions). Rather, folks mostly want to agree or disagree with findings - is this democracy, shouting "yea" or "nay."

Finally, while I have the floor, let me gripe about responses to the reviews. Ratings for reviews often seem heavily influenced by whether or not the reader agrees with the substance of the author's findings. In the extreme, a couple of two-sentence reviews said "Hurrah" and gave high "was-this-review-useful" ratings, apparently based only on shared conclusions (or prejudices) minimally identified. I enjoyed reading this book, and sympathize with his overall argument, but do not consider the work an act of genius or the last word on the topic.

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