But I do think there's an aspect of certainty intertwined with some politics, and that concerns the *role* of government. When the democratic process finally decides on, for example, what speech to regulate (to pick an extreme example), it almost doesn't matter how open the process was and how many different viewpoints were represented -- at the end of the day, there's some law passed and certain topics are henceforth not only off the table, but actually illegal.
Many positions (all across the political "spectrum" -- even "centrist ones") would -- if implemented -- implicitly say "these other positions have no place in our democratic society".
This (IMO) largely explains The Bill of Rights. We've placed -- with a high degree of confidence ;-) -- some "certainty" completely out of bounds.
I would say that there's a key difference between saying something is out of bounds because it's *instrumentally* incompatible with democracy/living in a society not in a state of perpetual conflict and saying democracy has determined that same thing is *morally* out of bounds.
Really well stated!
But I do think there's an aspect of certainty intertwined with some politics, and that concerns the *role* of government. When the democratic process finally decides on, for example, what speech to regulate (to pick an extreme example), it almost doesn't matter how open the process was and how many different viewpoints were represented -- at the end of the day, there's some law passed and certain topics are henceforth not only off the table, but actually illegal.
Many positions (all across the political "spectrum" -- even "centrist ones") would -- if implemented -- implicitly say "these other positions have no place in our democratic society".
This (IMO) largely explains The Bill of Rights. We've placed -- with a high degree of confidence ;-) -- some "certainty" completely out of bounds.
I would say that there's a key difference between saying something is out of bounds because it's *instrumentally* incompatible with democracy/living in a society not in a state of perpetual conflict and saying democracy has determined that same thing is *morally* out of bounds.