Centerfield

More tolerance for things you like AND things ya don't

I couldn't resist giving a counterpoint to Rick's position below (in the comments section of the gun rights entry) in which he described allowing private gun ownership as at best "bad policy enshrined." So now I can't resist when Loren Lomaskey at Reason provides a better rationale that I did for things like letting others own guns even if you don't like them:

The answer proffered by John Locke, and by his successors in the liberal tradition, is that the individual is morally prior to the state and that people have rights to life, liberty, and property that must be respected. Majorities enjoy a prerogative to rule because collective decisions must be taken from time to time, but that prerogative is limited by individuals’ rights.

Lomaskey's piece is a book review of William Galston's Liberal Pluralism, but it starts with a well written take on an idea we have touched on, how to "dictate democracy," as I put it poorly the other day:

What was needed to make rule by the people effective was the addition of mechanisms to restrain those people from overreaching and destructively turning on themselves. However, if the restraining agent was something external to the governed, then the regime would be rule of but not by the people. So the democratic conundrum devolved into the question of how a polity not controlled by another could control itself.

Lots of good thinking to be found if you read the whole thing. Posted by Brian Keegan at November 11, 2003 09:25 PM