ABSTRACT
In the twentieth century, history showed tragically that democratic values can be threatened by their own dynamics within the very societies in which they were born. This chapter explains how difficult it is to export the Great Separation of the political and the religious and the respect for the Rule of Law into other traditions. The individual of "extreme" democracy feared by Montesquieu risks yielding to the temptation of extreme criticism. Criticism can focus legitimately on decisions and on people, but it would err if it focused on the institutions themselves. Its citizens must work to save democracy from itself, to protect it from possible distortions inscribed in its plan and in its utopia. Its future depends on their capacity and on their will–on our capacity and on our will–to resist possible deviations so as to preserve the founding spirit of the democratic order: the recognition of others and free, reasonable, and controlled criticism of legitimate institutions.
