By Prof. Naomi Klineberg
One of democracy’s proudest boasts is its tolerance for dissent—even dissent that seeks to dismantle democracy itself. We permit unpopular speech, unpopular parties, and unpopular candidates, not because they are harmless, but because we believe a free society should not pre-emptively silence its critics.
Yet this principle contains a paradox: What happens when the tolerance of the system becomes the mechanism of its undoing?
The Paradox in Plain View
History offers sobering examples. The Weimar Republic granted full political rights to the National Socialists, who then used electoral success to abolish those same rights. More recently, democratic systems in Turkey, Hungary, and elsewhere have elevated leaders who, once in power, weakened the very institutions that legitimized their authority.
The defenders of open democracy might say: “The cure for bad ideas is better ideas.” But is that true when the bad ideas gain the power to suppress all others?
The Dilemma of Self-Defense
Political theorists sometimes call this the “militant democracy” dilemma: Should a democracy limit freedoms in order to survive? Germany’s postwar constitution famously allows banning political parties deemed hostile to the democratic order. But every limitation chips away at the moral high ground—what does it mean to defend liberty by curtailing it?
And who decides when a political actor crosses the line from disagreeable to dangerous? If that power rests in the state, how do we ensure it’s not abused for partisan ends?
Principle Versus Prudence
In moral philosophy, this is a contest between two duties: the duty to uphold democratic principles universally, and the duty to protect the very conditions that make those principles possible. A pure commitment to the first risks naivety; a pure commitment to the second risks authoritarian drift.
The difficulty is that both failures look similar from within: citizens may not realize freedoms are eroding until they are gone—whether by the slow tightening of illiberal laws or the slow corrosion of democratic norms.
Questions Worth Asking
So perhaps the most urgent task is not to declare a single “right” answer, but to sharpen the public’s ability to recognize the trade-offs. When a party proposes restrictions on the press, should the electorate treat that as legitimate disagreement or as a warning siren? When electoral rules are changed to favor incumbents, is that healthy political competition or the first step toward entrenchment?
A democracy capable of defending itself must be capable of noticing the early signs of harm—and agreeing on what counts as harm in the first place.
Democracy’s strength lies in its openness. Its weakness lies there too. The challenge is not to choose between those truths, but to hold them in tension—long enough, and carefully enough, that future generations inherit both liberty and the means to preserve it. The question, as always, is whether we can.
