When words lose their meaning, peoples lose their liberty.—Confucius

In spite of local and temporal differences, the authentic meaning of liberalism is un­derstood correctly throughout the world, with the possible exception of contempo­rary America.

Whereas “democracy” answers the ques­tion: “Who should rule?” and answers that it is directly or indirectly the majority of politically equal citizens, liberalism an­swers the question: “How should govern­ment be exercised?” Whatever the form of government, the exercise of power should not prevent citizens from enjoying the greatest amount of liberty compatible with the Common Good. (Not even the most celebrated liberal has the right to drive 100 miles per hour through a village.)

Democracy can be liberal or illiberal, but while an absolute monarchy cannot be democratic, it can be liberal. The monar­chy of Louis XIV, who allegedly said “I am the State,” was in many ways far more liberal than a number of modern democ­racies. He could not require an annual income tax or conscript his subjects for military service, nor could he issue a law banning champagne from dinner tables. Conversely, many of the horrors of the French Revolution were democratic (but not liberal).

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a gradual and problematic syn­thesis of democracy and liberalism took place. Since its beginning, this union suf­fered from the democratic principle of equality, the antithesis of liberty. We are either free or equal since equality is “un­natural” and can only be realized by artifi­cial, if not repressive, measures. (Think of a garden hedge. How can an equal height be achieved? Only by constant clipping!) Af­ter all, William Dean Howells called “Lib­erty and Inequality” the two great Ameri­can ideals, and Charles Beard insisted that the Founding Fathers loathed democracy more than Original Sin. Furthermore, the word democracy appears neither in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Constitution.