Over the last 17 years, the number of countries that receive a score of 0 out of 4 on the media freedom indicator has ballooned from 14 to 33. The media freedom is coming under pressure in at least 157 countries. New coups destabilized Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Peru, and Brazil. Previous years’ coups and ongoing repression continued to diminish basic liberties in Guinea, Turkey, Myanmar, and Thailand. "A wide definition of democracy is that it is a political system in which those who rule have been obliged to seek consent from those they govern through some sort of council or assembly." But political rulers try to rule as autocrats. Democracy is only valuable as an institutional constraint—that is, to build and maintain a limited state with a wide margin of individual liberty. The most serious setbacks for freedom and democracy were the result of war, coups, and attacks on democratic institutions by illiberal incumbents. Governments used violence and other means to destroy cult...