Books: Liberty Is a Lady

THE SECRET OF DEMOCRACY (258 pp.)—Suzanne Labin—Vanguard ($5).

Suzanne Labin writes with a hatpin. This young (thirtyish) French political scientist impales totalitarian myths and neutralist delusions, prods lukewarm intellectuals who rarely rise to the defense of democracy, or if they do, praise it with faint damns. Author Labin has small use for so-called thinkers who don the smoked glasses of a spurious objectivity and report that they can see no difference between Western freedom and Eastern tyranny except "shades of grey." She believes that it is worth restating the great central truth, or "secret," of democracy, i.e., that it is the first,...