Individual Liberty and Social Control
Individual Liberty and Social Control"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time,with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Daniel Webster said in a speech given in Charleston, South Carolina, May 10, 1847, "Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have." However, Ralph Waldo Emerson made an entry into one of his journals in 1851 which read, "The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Daniel Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan." It would seem that Mr. Webster and Mr. Emerson don't see eye to eye on the topic of liberty. One sees liberty as something to be controlled, the other sees it as something to be left alone. In John Stuart Mill's essay, On Liberty, he approaches things from a classical liberalist standpoint, while his conservative opponents take the paternalist view. Like Webster and Emerson, two sides of the same coin, but very different in philosophy nonetheless. The town of Skokie, Illinois has a large Jewish population, including many survivors of the holocaust brought about by the Nazi party occupying Germany and much of Europe during the secon
He said, "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression. He suggests that democracies which allow the majority to keep out the voice of a minority group, for our purposes the American Nazi Party, in effect become a tyranny doing much more harm than good. Mill professes his belief in autonomy, however this only applies when a person is not placing another in danger. " Dworkin would see what Morris was doing as harm to himself, and the logical thing for society to do is to limit or coercively stop him from using marijuana and LSD. There shouldn't even be a law against marijuana. So what would Mill say about drug use? How would Mill feel about this man's right to grown and consume marijuana in the privacy of his own home? Mill would definitely disagree with the D. So by limiting or denying the ANP the right to march through Skokie we deny ourselves a "clearer perception of the truth" because we have not heard all sides, we have not allowed all voices to be heard. Obviously the defendant wasn't harming anyone else, and if he was harming himself (a) it doesn't affect anyone but himself and (b) the statement that he is "threatening his personal freedom" is a matter of opinion not fact. No matter the offensiveness, or the unpopularity of an opinion we must allow it to be heard or we shoot ourselves in the foot by destroying the freedoms and liberties we are trying so boldly to protect. Mill also made the point that the majority opinion no matter how popular is not always correct. " See, we need society to police our actions, and make sure we are all tucked in nice and safe at night because we are all too stupid to take care of ourselves and make our own decisions. In other words, if society views something in this way, then it is a matter not just of private morality, but of public morality also. I would like to close my lastpaper of the semester with a quote from Thomas Paine's Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.
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Acceptance Essays
