There Is a Limit

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was

at first feared primarily as something that would operate

through the acts of the public authorities, and this is how

the man in the street still sees it. But thoughtful people

saw that •society itself can be the tyrant—society collectively

tyrannizing over individuals within it—and that •this kind

of tyranny isn’t restricted to what society can do through

the acts of its political government. Society can and does

enforce its own commands; and if it issues wrong commands

instead of right, or any commands on matters that it oughtn’t

to meddle with at all, it practises a social tyranny that is

more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.

Although it isn’t usually upheld by such extreme penalties,

it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more

deeply into the details of life and enslaving the soul itself. So

protection against the tyranny of government isn’t enough;

there needs to be protection also against the tyranny of

prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society

to turn its own ideas and practices into rules of conduct,

and impose them—by means other than legal penalties—on

those who dissent from them; to hamper the development

and if possible to prevent the formation of any individuality

that isn’t in harmony with its ways. . . . There is a limit

to how far collective opinion can legitimately interfere

with individual independence; and finding and defending

that limit is as indispensable to a good condition of human

affairs as is protection against political despotism.

--John Stewart Mill, Liberty