"A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it"

Frank Lloyd Wright’s perspective on freedom and democracy critiques the superficiality that can exists within a system if it does not prioritize genuine individual liberty. When he asserts that a free America "means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor", he is underscoring the non-negotiable importance of equal personal freedoms regardless of socioeconomic status. True democracy, in his view, is not only about political processes or institutions but about the lived reality and autonomy of each person within society.

Wright warns that if this core principle of individual liberty is neglected, democracy becomes hollow, a mere tool or "expedient" that reorganizes society not for human flourishing, but for subjugation to the relentless mechanisms of modernity. He evokes "the machine" both literally and metaphorically. On one hand, it recalls the technological and industrial systems that drive efficiency but can also depersonalize and dehumanize. On the other, it reflects rigid social structures and bureaucracies that demand conformity and obedience. Democracy without substantive freedom, Wright contends, merely adapts people to servitude under these new systems, producing a populace conditioned to accept and even embrace their own subjugation.

His words challenge readers to consider the difference between formal democracy and authentic liberty. Societies may maintain elections and the trappings of freedom, but if real freedom, agency, dignity, and opportunity, remains absent for substantial portions of the population, the system's true function may be not liberation, but control. Wright’s broader implication is that democracy should be transformative, not transactional; its purpose must always be to foster environments where each individual can realize their potential, not just accommodate themselves to the interests of economics or technology. In suggesting that people may be made to “like” their own enmeshment, Wright gestures towards the seductive normalization of unfreedom and calls for vigilance in preserving the spirit, not just the structure, of democracy.