[Peace-discuss] Balance and liberalism

[David Green]

If we invoke ancient Greece as an example of democracy and its problems, it seems to me like an example of bad cases making bad law.
   
  DG

Bob Illyes <illyes at uiuc.edu> wrote:
  I'm not sure I get your drift, David, but let me address the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights lists rights of individuals that cannot be infringed on 
by the majority, i.e., the US government. A balance between individual 
liberty and a type of majority rule is thus built into our amended 
Constitution. Is it imperfect? Absolutely. You'll get no argument from me 
there. The issue is whether or not "perfection" is actually what one wants.

Discussions of the problem of democracy tending toward tyranny go back at 
least as far as Aristotle, who saw plenty of examples in Athens. He 
promoted something he called "polity", which he defined on a class basis, a 
comprise between rule by the majority and rule by the wealthy, either 
extreme in his view being bad. Modern liberalism concentrates more on 
rights beyond property, such as are addressed by the Declaration of 
Independence (unfortunately a document not part of the legal basis of the 
US). The issue of property vs. other rights is kind-of artificial, however. 
John Locke named ones ownership of oneself as the core property from which 
all other properties are derived, so whatever his flaws, his argument does 
not allow us to value what we now call property over persons.

Does this answer what you ask???

Bob

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