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

Translated into twenty languages .The Future of Freedom is a modern classic that uses historical analysis to shed light on the present, examining how democracy has changed our politics, economies, and social relations.
 
/Zakaria holds that some of the features we take for granted in democracy, such as universal adult suffrage, are recent innovations that overlie, and now threaten to obscure, far more important aspects of “constitutional liberalism—the rule of law, private property rights, and . . . separated powers and free speech and assembly.” These ideals, “best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge,” are the true hallmarks of democracy, but they are not the ones that Americans, at least, think of when that golden term is uttered, and not the ones that are called to mind when the talk turns to spreading one-man, one-vote democracy around the world, which is a peculiarly American project./  -- Kirkus Reivew
 
Prescient in laying out the distinction between democracy and liberty, the book contains a new afterword on the United States's occupation of Iraq and a wide-ranging update of the book's themes.
 
Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN's flagship international affairs show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, as well as weekly columnist for the Washington Post, and the best-selling author of The Post-American World and The Future of Freedom.