Introducing an informal, and entirely unofficial, fallacy—the “one man, one vote, & I’m the man” fallacy.
I think this is best explained using the concept of freedom. If someone has the freedom to destroy another person’s freedom, total freedom is reduced if that power is ever used. If it is not used, then that freedom does not really exist. Even the apparent freedom can be enough to destroy another person’s freedom, if the threat of use stops another person doing something.
Imagine you’re very much in favour of freedom. I hope you’ll accept that in order to have that freedom, you have to be able to exercise that freedom. If, say, you have the freedom of speech, but you’re not able to speak, then, actually, you don’t have the freedom of speech.
So, now, let’s imagine a country, say, Ruritania. In Ruritania, people have 80% freedom (they don’t have 100% because they’re not allowed to put pineapple on pizza). Amongst this 80% freedom is the freedom to use a gun. If two Ruritanians use this freedom to shoot each other dead, the total freedom goes down from 160% (80% + 80%) to zero—they no longer exist, and thus have nothing, let alone freedom, because there is nothing to do the having. If one survives, that Ruritanian goes to prison, so their freedom is reduced significantly. Even if the killer walks free, the total freedom is halved.
Now, let’s imagine a second country, called Grand Fenwick. In Grand Fenwick, everyone has freedom, except they cannot have guns. Let’s say this means each Grand Fenwickian has 75% freedom. Two Grand Fenwickians cannot have guns, so they cannot shoot each other, so after they’ve had their grand Fenwickian argument, and not killed each other, the total freedom remains at 150% (75% + 75%).
Now, actually, the whole thing about guns is far more complex, especially where animals have people on their menu, but it does illustrate my point: allowing someone the freedom to destroy another person’s freedom reduces overall freedom, it doesn’t increase it. It shows how apparently having more freedom actually means having less freedom.
Using your freedom to suppress other peoples’ freedom is actually reducing freedom. Thus a free society will not be utterly free, it’ll be a balance between freedom with restrictions to prevent one person destroying or reducing another person’s freedom. The question is where that balance should lie.