In Federalist 10, James Madison argued that the soon-to-be-ratified Constitution would serve as an effective bulwark against what John Adams, amongst others, called “the tyranny of the majority.” The Founders believed this danger arose chiefly through democratic government. But John Stuart Mill realized that a “social tyranny” of the majority could be “more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.” As he wrote in On Liberty, “Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.”
The Scrapbook wonders if even Mill himself could have imagined the brave new world of twenty-first-century social media tyranny. Its latest victim? Not an easy-to-hate far-right racist, but mild-mannered University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, better known, from his popular blog, as the indispensable Instapundit.
As Charlotte, N.C., became embroiled in violence this week after the death of a black man at the hands of a black police officer, Reynolds tweeted a WBTV report of “Protesters on I-277 stopping traffic and surrounding vehicles” with a three-word comment: “Run them down.” The meaning of the wry remark seemed obvious. If you’re stopped by angry mobs, the safest thing to do is drive away. “Whatever you think of the tastefulness of his suggestion regarding the protesters in Charlotte, the idea that he is seriously inciting any sort of actual or real threat is risible,” as Reason.com editor in chief Nick Gillespie wrote. But Twitter seems intent on specializing in the risible; the social media site inactivated Reynolds’s account until he deleted the tweet.
That didn’t end things, of course. USA Today suspended his column for a month, and UT administrators scolded him for the “irresponsible use of his platform” and promised they are “investigating this matter.” And so “one of the most interesting and thoughtful voices on the broadly defined right,” as Gillespie summarizes Reynolds, “an incredibly sharp and serious person with an eye on the possibilities offered by technological and cultural innovation,” might be hounded from the public square. Asked by The Scrapbook if, as he suggested online, he really plans to disappoint his fans and eventually leave Twitter, Reynolds replied, “As soon as this settles down.”
And so Mill’s call to arms is as relevant now as ever: “There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.”
