Has America Become an Illiberal Democracy?

Henry Oliner

On last Sunday’s GPS show on CNN, Fareed Zakaria made an excellent presentation on the rise of illiberal democracies. Our constitutional liberalism inscribed by its framers rightly and deliberately constrained the elements of democracy, which they justly feared, with an elaborate system of checks, limits, and dispersion of power.  The rise of many recent democracies without the liberal foundations of free speech, reason, and tolerance becomes the very example our framers feared; majoritarian rule running roughshod over the minority. Our foreign policy’s encouragement of democracy without constitutional protections of liberty or a liberal cultural heritage was short-sighted.  Zakaria referred to an essay he penned for Foreign Affairs in 1997, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy". An excerpt from that essay:...........Obama justified his abuse of executive power with complaints of congressional obstruction. With his pen and his phone, he alone would express the people’s will.........More