Democracy is known as the right of the person as a citizen to not only vote for their future leaders but also defend their own opinion. It involves freedom of speech and freedom of expression of their thoughts. The concept of freedom of speech is synonymous with democracy which is the ability to be able to speak freely without being shunned for holding explicit views and opinions. The concept is regarded as one of the most integral themes in contemporary liberal democracies. Freedom of thought and speech involves the power of Communication of ideas, which, in many people’s view, is a gift of God. Democracy can be regarded as something that is a right of each citizen, as per the view of Samuel Johnson in 1971
“Every man has a right to other what he thinks is truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.”
It further asserts the notion that democracy not only involves the right to defend our own opinion publically but it is also a huge responsibility and a duty to treat all the other views as equally validated and to give them the same weight. This also asserts that if all humanity has a particular opinion and only one of them has a contradictory viewpoint, even then, in a democratic rule, he cannot be silenced by holding the thoughts that his views may be troublesome for other people or a source of discontentment. The term democracy throws light upon the equality in the freedom of expression and speech and hence comes up with the duty to hold that all opinions are equally valid.
References
Macpherson, Crawford Brough. “The life and times of liberal democracy.” (1978).
