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

Paperback: 295 pages
Publisher: W.W.Norton 2004

Fareed Zakaria's brilliant book is by his own words a "call for self-control, for a restoration of balance between democracy and liberty". Zakaria maps the future of freedom by researching the past. He disginguishes between constitutional liberalism and democracy and his conclusions are rather surprising:

"Liberty led to democracy and not the other way around." p. 31

Our democratic age is witnessing the advance of what Zakaria describes as illiberal democracy.Examples, dictator-like leaders who pay lipservice to elections but rule like tyrants are abound: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Putin's Russia and lots more. Zakaria also takes issue with the democratization and commercialization of politics, economics and culture in the US and visions a troubled future for her...

Erudite Zakaria is one of my favorite journalist-academics. His writing is fluent and entertaining. His eye for a catchy phrase and for new ways to organize our thinking on traditionally accepted "wisdoms" is invaluable. Zakaria, a (neo-)classical realist in academics, teaches us to see the world in the complex colors it is painted. Above all, Zakaria is honest.

"The execution of Socrates was democratic but not liberal." p. 32

"Although the creators of blogs think of themselves as radical democrats, they are in fact a new Tocquevillean elite." p. 254

Second Opinion: Robert Kagan / Powell's Books

¶ 8/07/2008 09:47:00 ip.