There is no liberty if special privilege restricts the franchise to a portion of the community.
Harold J. Laski: “There is no liberty if special privilege restricts the franchise to a portion of the community.”
Editor's note · Context
Laski asserts that true liberty cannot exist if voting rights are limited to a select group of individuals.
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To deny novelty or grievance a right of expression is a certain, if, indeed, an ultimate, validation of the truth they contain.
He is able, accordingly, to indulge in the twofold luxury not only of preserving his own authority, but also of assisting the persons attacked to enter, if they so choose, the way of truth.
The only way to deal with novelty is to understand it, and the only way to deal with grievance is to seek a remedy for the complaint it embodies.
The intolerance may be Catholic, when it insists that a unity of outlook is essential for the preservation of society; or it may be Protestant when, as with Calvin and the Socinians, it holds that the blasphemous nature of the belief…





