Liberals therefore wanted to prevent tyranny from occurring, but classical and modern liberals had differing ideas on how this could be done. Classical liberals, such as Acton, did not believe in democracy because the majority could crush individual liberty and minority rights, de Tocqueville said that there is a danger of the “tyranny of the majority”. Also, JS Mill thought political wisdom was unequally distributed and mainly related to education, and that the uneducated masses may act according to narrow class interest rather than for the good of others. However, modern liberals see democracy as a virtue this is because protective democracy checks the power of the government and advanced individual interests. Active participation of the population in a democracy advances the education of citizens and allows them to fulfil their potential. Moreover, they believe that democracy creates a consensus and maintains equilibrium within complex and fluid modern societies.
Liberals believe in liberal-democratic political systems, there are two elements evident in these systems; the liberal part means the belief in limited government power, and the democratic part means that government should be sensitive to the needs of the people. There are also three central features of liberal-democratic political systems, the first is; that they are indirect and representative, This means that political office is gained through regular elections based on “one person one vote, one value”. Basically everyone has the right to vote and everyone’s vote is of equal worth. Secondly, there would be competition and electoral choice, which would be ensured by political pluralism. Meaning that there would be many political parties for the electorate to choose from. Finally, there would be a clear distinction between the state and the society. This would be maintained by internal and external checks on government power and the existence of autonomous groups and interests.
I conclude that liberals believe the statement “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” because they see individuals as egoistical and therefore if they got power in a country they would abuse that power. Then this in turn would lead to tyrannical governments such as those of; Hussein, Mugabe and Stalin. The implications of liberals believing in this statement are that they believe that rational individuals should want to sign up to a social contract to establish a sovereign government. Individuals would want to do this because life before government was endless civil war, with life being; solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Life would be this way because individuals are selfish, greedy and power seeking. Therefore rational beings would enter into a social contract and sacrifice a portion of their liberty to set up a system of law; this would prevent the otherwise inevitable: property and lives being under constant threat. Seventeenth century writer John Locke said “Where there is no law there is no freedom.”
