主题：【原创】晚清外交官(3)：万家酣睡几人醒 -- 风雨声

It is an excellent article of yours about the majority tyranny. It really shows that you care so much for our countrymen. Pardon me that I put it in Englih, because my limited knowledge in pinyin will take me forever to say the following.

Being a layman myself, not involved in any form of governmental agency, I am sort of looking at the problem in this way. "rule by law" and "democracy" is something surely the way to go, but JS Mill, and all the other individuals, who you mentioned, are persons working on their own, to have the western civilization evolved or emerged to the present state from a state not too much different from ours now.

I think there is one more thing besides rule by law and democracy. That is civilization or enlightenment. The Europeans were in a state of mind much different from nowadays back in 300 years ago, or in the dark age. Yet they come through successfully into the present state we all can see in USA today. All Europeans think much differently now comparing to 300 years ago.

What had happened ? It is the result of so much hard work of all these enlightened individuals. They had successfully moved the people as a whole to a higher horizontal.

We had some success too. For example, now no Chinese will accept anyone, who want to be a king. We all think that science is good for the benefit of everyone. We all learned to respect some good European thinking.

The point I want to make here is that when some individual tries to move the people as a whole toward something better. He will experience a lot of resistance. The majority thinks different from him and will give him hard time, if not bad time. That is what JS Mill tried to say. If he fails, then the whole will not be moved. How to get a breakthrough ? That is the most critical point.

Of course, there is no proof that it is something surely better from that individual. That is what JS Mill tried to outline a scheme to approach the problem in his "On Liberty".

Please see www.jsmill.com