From Conformity to Tyranny (Law & Justice)

Quote from Theodore Dalrymple on The Free West:

"We have increasingly lost sight of the ability of society to self-regulate. Societies that count many millions of citizens are large enough to provide for all tastes and opinions, if left to do so (and if the economy is sufficiently open). We have forgotten that freedom is freedom, and not the imposition of compliance with our latest, and no doubt temporary, moral enthusiasm. Furthermore, tolerance requires that we tolerate not behaviour of which we approve - for intolerance of such behaviour would be almost inconceivable, short of complete madness - but of behaviour of which we disapprove. A society in which everyone conforms, because he is forced to conform, to someone else’s idea of virtue is not free, it is tyrannical. Virtue in a population must arise from some source other than the statute book."