Where to draw a line between liberty and authority Mill proposes that people will gain greater happiness if they can tolerate different ideas rather than to censor others to follow the will. The right of liberty should allow citizens to pursue their individually defines visions of the good life without causing harm to others. However, the government has the right to punish the people who jeopardize other people¡¦s rights. In fact, Mill¡¦s idea has been widely applied in the United Sate. The principle of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is to protect value of the individual without being suppressed by the government¡¦s authority. Therefore, differ ...view middle of the document...
In order to lead a peaceful and healthy society, the tolerance to diversity of voice and different way of life is very crucial. In America, all of us are immigrants or descendent of immigrants, and we have different ways of life. However, people can live together and express their individual opinions freely. The fact is due to the tolerance of our government, which can successfully transform the difference into a unique American culture. For instance, the American government has given people freedom of religion. People can believe what they want, but they cannot act against the law. Even though American has the most diversity religious, she is the most harmonic place for different religion. Our democratic society emphasizes the value of the individual, and the religious freedom represents the freedom to have individual thinking and the form of individual expression.However, living in a community, our private activities may have direct or indirect influence to others. So many times that our freedom might have caused conflicts with rights of other. At that moment, we cannot be selfish that without considering other¡¦s feeling and cannot causing harm is our limitation. For example, smoking in pubic closed area has been banded in previous years. Scientists find out more than 40 substances in the second hand smoke are known to cause cancer in human. Passive smoking causes many lung cancer deaths in non-smokers. Therefore, if people are smoking in the relative privacy of a home, we cannot forbid them to do it. Instead, smoking at closed public area, such as elevator, should be banded. However, sometimes it is quite difficult to distinguish between the characteristic of activity is belonged to private or pubic. Previous president Bill Clinton defended that his sex relationship with Monica is so private that the society cannot interfere in. In the scandal of Eron Bankruptcy, our vice president, Dick Cheney, refused to get information on his meeting or conversation with the Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, because he had the speech freedom with his friends. When we come to the conflict between the right of liberty and authority, we need a ¡§higher law¡¨ and Supreme Court to resolve it.Our government allows people to have freedom, but it also requires people to take responsibility for their behavior in order to protect other people¡¦s rig...
