The two are often antonyms. From Todd Hayen at off-guardian.org:
You hear the word “democracy” thrown around quite a bit these days. “Democracy is being destroyed in the United States by Donald Trump!!” and “Democracy is being destroyed in the United States by Joe Biden!”
Every time we turn around we are being told that democracy is being destroyed by this or that—in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, North Korea—oops, they don’t have any democracy to destroy, right? I forgot.
Not only is democracy being destroyed in all of our previously democratic countries, but it is being destroyed in countries that never had democracy, or haven’t had it before recently acquiring it. All of us democratic countries also have to be the ones responsible for maintaining democracy everywhere else in the world—like the lack of democracy, or lost democracy, will somehow rub off on us, or it will spread to us like some sort of infectious disease.
We must kill “non-democracy” before it spreads, because the more countries that are not democratic, the more likely we, the US and Canada, and anywhere else that is “free,” will get struck down and crumble. Very much like what happens when you have a bad apple in a bushel basket filled with other, healthy, apples. The rest of the apples will surely go bad.
But here’s the rub—“freedom” being conflated with “democracy.”
A democratic country is not necessarily a free country. And although I don’t know of any of these, I don’t think a free country needs to be democratic—a strong constitution is all that is needed, really. A strong constitution and a strong means to protect it.
It is impossible to control democracy and make it protect freedom. Democracy grants the ‘right’ to control others by popular vote which easily obtained for any ‘law’ contradicting liberty, free market and the exercise of moral judgement to direct one’s life. ~Chad