BUT YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THE RULE TO ITS NATURAL CONCLUSION:

The Golden Rule is beautifully simple. It is intuitively fair. The alternative--treating others as you would not want to be treated--is the ethic of every bully, warlord, and tyrant in history. If there is a natural law, the Golden Rule is its first statute. It's also the strongest argument for some form of democracy and civil rights. 

Democracy is the political version of the Golden Rule. I treat you as an equal citizen because I want you to treat me the same way. I recognize and protect your rights and freedoms--free speech, free worship, and more--because I want you to recognize and protect mine.

Other political systems depend on unequal, hierarchical arrangements: ruler over ruled; priest over layman; military over civilian; one race over another; one religion over another; one tribe, culture, tongue, or people over another. No such arrangement can survive the scrutiny of the Golden Rule, because no emperor wants to be treated as a subject. Democracy, conversely, is when the ruled are the rulers.

But taking the political Golden Rule seriously means accepting its full implications. When we recognize other people's right to say, worship, or print whatever they want--when we grant them equal citizenship and liberty--they are going to do and say things that we disagree with.

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