ABSTRACT
The emphasis of liberal democracy is on the autonomy of the individual rather than on either communal or plural autonomy. In their zeal to protect individual rights, liberal democrats have sometimes turned a blind eye to inequities due to class and status rather than governmental coercion. The English Whigs were responsible for creating political conditions in which natural rights-liberalism could first take hold. Rousseau's unwillingness to make rights corollaries of natural law and as such prior to civic enactment, and his readiness to permit these rights to be restricted for the social good, has led many to criticize his theory as dangerous to liberty. Especially in the light of the work of modern historians, it is widely though not unanimously accepted that the French Revolution was more a social revolution than the American, and also that the American Revolution was the more successful in laying a foundation for stable democratic government because of its liberal character.
