In the United States right now there is a judicial debate over the constitutionality of the Presidents health care plan. Once a contested law reaches the Supreme Court these two political principles can be seen as being in conflict. In the American system the peoples right to collectively decide on the laws that govern them is strictly limited by constitution intended to protect individual freedoms, in a sense a highly undemocratic idea, one that prioritizes the individual over the community.
If democracy is thought of as a system to control the power of the state by making it subject to the will of the people, in order to protect the individual citizen. Then democracy is a mean in order to further individual liberty. Then it also makes sense to place limits on the ability of the collective citizenry to act in a manner contradictory to aim of democracy, which would be individual liberty.
If democracy instead is thought of as an end in of itself, as a superior system to regulate human activity, then placing limits on it would be folly. It would constrain the ability of the people to create the best possible conditions under which to live their lives.
The current American system would seem to have been crafted with a view of democracy more in line with the first of these two perspectives. My own country of Sweden would seem to have a democracy shaped by a view of democracy closer to the second of these perspectives, where the citizenry is trusted to a greater extent not to use the political process to strip themselves of their freedom and given more room to violate the perceived rights of the individual if the benefits to the group is considered great enough. The source of these differing views on democracy can be debated but the Sweden being a much more homogeneous society likely played a part.
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