The issue is important—arguably one of the most important of our time. And yet it is persistently misunderstood, mostly because people keep confusing democracy with freedom. In truth, few things are further apart. Democracy is not freedom. It can coexist with freedom, but it does not guarantee it—and very often it actively undermines it.
I once learned a definition that stuck: democracy is the dictatorship of the majority. Later, someone tried to soften the blow by appending a comforting clause—“while respecting the minority.” That addition is pure feel-good decoration. A moral fig leaf. History shows, again and again, that when the majority wants something badly enough, the wishes and rights of the minority are worth exactly nothing.
My own country, Austria, demonstrated this with frightening clarity. It was prepared to force every single person over the age of eighteen into an experimental medical treatment, backed by the threat of ruinous fines for those who refused. The law was eventually scrapped before it could fully metastasize, but that doesn’t absolve it. It existed. It was passed. And it came terrifyingly close to becoming the most severe violation of fundamental rights since World War II and the grotesquely inhuman Nazi regime.
Which, incidentally, also arrived on the back of democratic approval.
This is the part people desperately want to forget: the majority is not inherently wise, benevolent, or restrained. The majority is a monster. A blunt, emotional, self-justifying monster that cannot be trusted with unchecked power. That is precisely why individual fundamental rights must exist—and why they must be cast in iron, not written in erasable pencil.
This is what I have always admired about the United States. Its fundamental rights are not vague, aspirational declarations for “humanity” that individuals cannot realistically invoke, as is so often the case in Europe. They are individualistic. Concrete. Enforceable. Imperfect, yes—but deliberately designed as a bulwark against the monstrosities majorities are perfectly willing to inflict when fear, panic, or moral fervor take hold.
It is not a flawless system. But it is the best one we have.
And it is incomplete without one final element: radical transparency and accountability. There must be a fundamental right to see what those who govern us are doing, how they spend our money, and whom they serve. Terms must be limited. Power must expire. And when representatives turn out to be atrocious, there must be a real mechanism to recall them.
Democracy without hard individual rights is not freedom. It is merely organized coercion—occasionally polite, often smiling, and always one crisis away from showing its teeth.