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
