No one is harmed, for instance, by a moderate indulgence in alcoholic liquor; but since drunkenness is harmful both to the individual and society, the state, it is said, is justified in prohibiting the manufacture or sale of alcoholic liquor.
Laski uses the example of alcohol to illustrate the tension between individual freedom and societal harm, questioning state intervention.
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We grant toleration in one part of the field only to deny it in another.
Each age finds that the incidence of freedom is significant at some special point, and there, once more, the lesson of freedom has to be learned.
The essence of the persecuting position is always that the persecutor has hold of truth and that he would betray its service by allowing it to be questioned.
We grant it in religion to deny it in politics; we grant it in politics, to deny it in economic matters.
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