Freedom that includes making their own laws.
You seem to be confusing freedom and democracy. The fact that a government is established by popular vote does not mean that such a government cannot be dangerous to freedom. The American Founding Fathers saw this danger so they established a system of checks and balances and adopted the Bill of Rights to protect the people from the government as much as possible.
The purpose of a government is to protect freedom. How the government is constituted is secondary.
Have you read F. A. Hayek? For him and other classical liberal thinkers, it is important what the government does or is allowed to do (=the scope of government), but whether it is a democracy, a monarchy or even a dictatorship is less important.
The freedom of speech seems to be becoming less important in Western Europe by the day. More and more “hate-speech” laws are passed. You can’t criticize a certain religion and call its founder a pedophile. You can’t say that trans-gender people are mentally ill. Now you won’t be able to burn the Chinese flag, even though it represents a despicable totalitarian regime.
Can’t you see where Germany is going?