Independence and Individuality

Even governance by the masses (rather than some elite group or class) can be reduced to nothing more than a majority forcing a minority to do what it wants. This can lead to slavery and many other great negatives. 

And government by the people, as J.S. Mill taught, is not always "the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or most active part of the people..." 

Tocqueville was concerned about the same problem.

Clearly when an elite or aristocratic class rules, the masses suffer. But even in representative democracies and democratic republics the majority or political classes frequently rule in ways that exclude, ignore or hurt certain people. In such a system, a few may be free but many are not.

At least two thinkers, Mill and Frederic Bastiat, thought there was only one way to counteract this: Freedom had to mean the right to do whatever a person wants as long as he doesn't hurt another person.  "The only freedom which deserves the name," according to Mill, "is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it."

Montesquieu went a step further, saying that liberty is the freedom to do what you should, and to not do what you shouldn't.