| (Note: Along Rt. 6A in Yarmouth,
Massachusetts, one sunny spring day, an old library was selling off its
old books. For about $4, I purchased a good-to-excellent condition leather
covered first American edition (originally published in England earlier)
of "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, published in Boston I believe in the
1870's. I don't know what it's real value was worth, and I lost it anyway.
The value in it for me was not that it was an old book with a lot of history
to it, or worth a lot of money, but which particular book it was. Of all
the required readings I did for my Political Science major, none made more
of an impact upon me than that book. It both was a celebration of democracy,
and a warning about it. It introduced the phrase "the tyranny of the majority"
to the common vernacular. Democracies are not necessarily by nature less
despotic than any other forms of government to those who are in the minority
or not represented as equally in their governments, and worse yet, can
legitimize such abuses as "justice" because they were sanctioned by or
served the interests of the majority of the population or the majority
of those in or represented by their governments. With many nation states
around the world having little historical basis as individual nations,
or much time to adjust ethno-politically to their borders, often which
were almost arbitrarily drawn without their populations consent, or sometimes
even their knowledge, the defining test of democracy is how it reacts to
this new test history has foisted upon it. Even in more established nations,
the need or desire to have everyone conform or act the same, share the
same beliefs and values, can have a monstrous effect on ideas or notions
of liberty and freedom, and what they should mean. Loss of minority languages
and customs, cultural genocide, the loss of being able to teach their children
as they wish, all of such things can be rationalized and legalized in terms
of promoting integration and nation building. These concerns need special
protection, special attention, and often they do get that attention, at
least in countries or times we are willing to pay such attention to them.
For other countries around the world in less developed regions, we often
turn a blind eye to such abuses and consider them necessary, when we consider
them at all, toward making their minority populations "civilized"
or integrating them into the main culture to reduce tensions by making
them, by force if necessary, all share the same culture and values and
speak the same languages according to lines on a map. I put these links
here for all those who lost their copies of "On Liberty" too, or those
many who read it but who have forgotten its advice, and for those who never
read it yet, but might find it as interesting. Words briefly flashed across
a computer screen don't have the spirit or soul of a paper book touched,
held in hand, and read by dozens of people sitting around candles or lamps
in their homes, schools, or libraries throughout more than a dozen decades
and in completely different eras of human history, but what those briefly
flashed words across a computer screen might inspire others to do, can
have even more long lasting tangibility. And depending on if those words
continue to be passed on in ways others might accidentally stumble across
them who might want or need to hear them, like a book sitting on a table
in the sun by the side of the road, just waiting to be discovered by anyone
who happens by, they still will retain that soul.)
http://www.constitution.org/jsm/liberty.htm
|