Explaining and evaluate principles - Essay Example

Second, the necessity of checks and balance, again with the end view to avoid or thwart tyranny that the people must give its consent on important matters of governance. We can take an extreme case as an example to illustrate this point such as leaders cannot just do whatever they want with the governed such as throwing anybody in jail they dislike or disagree with. The political liberties (including physical liberties) of the people must be ensured for a leader to govern. If a government or leader will do the example such as illegally detaining people it do not like or disagreed with, then it is also the right of the people to rebel and the options available to do this are in multitude but that would be digressing to discuss them.

Important aspects of governance that affects the people must also have the consent of the people. One example is the choice of leader, which Locke also agreed, must have the consent of the people through an election. . Mill also put forth the consequential theory on freedom that an individual’s course of action is acceptable for as long as it is good for the majority of the people which in a way modern government uses a guide when it disposes policies into action. With regard to freedom of speech John Stuart Mill is quite liberal in his point of view and it seems that he make an exception to this general theory that freedom must be regulated.

In general, Mill argues in his consequential theory that an individual is free to pursue a course of action or interest for as long as it do not harm to other. But in the expression of thought and discussion, Mill argued that it should not be abridged. His contention is that an individual’s capacity to express opinions and to discuss must be exercised in full and not to be suppressed. He did not argue for this naively. Mill knows that not all opinions are truthful and good. In fact, he mentioned that opinions and thoughts can be entirely false, partially true and wholly true which in all, is an inestimable and could benefit the common good.

Mill argues for this as; First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the