On Liberty [antikvár]

Editor's Introduction The history of modem democracy is studded with examples of conflict between two core values we prize: majority rule and minority liberty. The most searing examples of such conflict in American history have revolved around the issue of race: the imposition of the end to slavery on the imwilling (white) South; the long history of legally sanctioned discrimination against blacks and other minorities; desegregation in imwilling conummities, north and south. Twentieth-century America has witoessed a wide variety of conflicts between majority rule and minority rights. One of the most notorious instances was the prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages fn)m 1920 to 1933. Perennial issues that seem to haunt society include censorship of pornography, both "serious art" (e.g., D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, James Joyce's Ulysses) and the blatantly commercial in printed form, on stage and in film; the proscription from polidcal life of organizations considered to be beyond the pale of toleration on either the left or the right, of which the pariah treatment accorded the American Communist Party in the 1950s is a notable example in a long history of such cases; and the banning of religious practices, such as the snake-handling rituals of some southern Fundamentalists. New conflicts have made their appearance in late twentieth-century America. Among these are the right of the individual to use drugs for recreational purposes; the right of the individual to follow his or her sexual proclivities with other consenting adults; the right to life versus the right to abortion, and the right to die. Everyone, however committed a libertarian and however fierce a democrat, will on sober reflection probably conclude that there are minorities that he or she would wish to suppress (consider fifth columnists in wartime or sexual libertsirians who recruit children). Equally, we all belong to or can easily imagine belonging to minorities which inspire the majority with fear and loathing, as right-thinking Romans regarded the Christians in their midst. John Stuart Mill was among the first to appreciate and explore the issues raised by the inevitable conflict between minority rights and majority rule. His essay On Liberty (published in 1859) remains the essential starting point for discussion of this vital and never fully resolved problem of democratic society. Mill sought to explicate how