“General considerations and recent experience both show that democracy will remain effective only so long as government in its coercive action confines itself to tasks that can be carried out democratically.19 If democracy is a means of preserving liberty, then individual liberty is no less an essential condition for the working of democracy. Though democracy is probably the best form of limited government, it becomes an absurdity if it turns into unlimited government. Those who profess that democracy is all-competent and support all that the majority wants at any given moment are working for its fall. The old liberal is in fact a much better friend of democracy than the dogmatic democrat, for he is concerned with preserving the conditions that make democracy workable. It is not “antidemocratic” to try to persuade the majority that there are limits beyond which its action ceases to be beneficial and that it should observe principles which are not of its own deliberate making. If it is to survive, democracy must recognize that it is not the fountainhead of justice and that it needs to acknowledge a conception of justice which does not necessarily manifest itself in the popular view on every particular issue. The danger is that we mistake a means of securing justice for justice itself. Those who endeavor to persuade majorities to recognize proper limits to their just power are therefore as necessary to the democratic process as those who constantly point to new goals for democratic action.”

Excerpt From: F. A. Hayek & Ronald Hamowy. “The Constitution of Liberty.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-constitution-of-liberty/id568083914

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