Thought over the Weekend (I)

I realize I haven't been blogging as much recently. And I feel badly. All the more so because the reason is that I've been doing some fasicinating non-blog reading and writing which I'm not sharing.

So to at least partially make it up, I figure I'll pluck out some of the more thought-provoking passages from the stuff I've been reading, and hand it off to y'all. Consider this a modified version of my "debater cards" feature. Feel free to discuss, flame, argue, or do whatever with it.

Today's edition comes from Patricia J. Williams's superb book "The Alchemy of Race and Rights" (Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1991)

The tyranny of the majority has survived in liberal political theory as a justification for all manner of legislative restraint, particularly economic restraint. But what [John Stuart] Mill did not anticipate was that the persuasive power of the forum itself would subvert the polis, as well as the law, to the extent that there is today precious little 'public' left, just the tyranny of what we call the private. In this nation there is, it is true, relatively little force in the public domain compared to other nations, relatively little intrusive governmental interference. But we risk instead the life-crushing disenfranchisement of an entirely owned world. Permission must be sought to work upon the face of the earth. Freedom becomes contractual and therefore obligated; freedom is framed by obligation; and obligation is paired not with duty but with debt. (43)

Maybe not earth-shattering, but still interesting. The very tools we used to free ourselves from feudalism and other caste systems (indeed, the very things we conceptualize as "freedom") are in the process of enslaving us.