For all its positives, democracy has a faulty premise. It presumes, in error, that bringing together a group of people to vote or otherwise collectively decide on something, can create new rights and authority out of thin air.
As decent people we need to respect the dignity, agency, and responsibility of individuals, which must mean that we allow those individuals to falter, to bind themselves to less-than-ideal agreements, and to fail in their endeavours.
How do I reconcile the many needs and demands of others against my own self-interest? Is there a middle ground between selfish capitalism and utopian socialism?
Building ten private universities with an engrained and transferable cultural ethos is a much stronger safeguard than adopting a law that requires all educational institutions to obey what the state deems the cultural ethos to be.
Freedom is something – perhaps the only thing – worth using coercive violence for, but never against.
