“Revisiting On Liberty: Magnificent Guide in Troubling Times”

The year 1859 was eventful. Construction on the Suez Canal began, Darwin published The Origin of Species, John Brown raided and was subsequently executed in Harpers Ferry, Colonel Drake drilled the world’s first oil well in Pennsylvania, and Charles Dickens published A Tale of Two Cities.

Yet for classic liberals and libertarians, the year marked another significant milestone and a cause for celebration: the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill published On Liberty.

The masterpiece was an attempt by Mill to balance the safeguarding of liberal rights with utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest many).

On Liberty presents a powerful case for maximum individual freedom, so long as others are not directly harmed by the individual’s actions.

Mill famously states, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

Today the Left tramples the individual. Society desperately needs a refresh of On Liberty.

On Liberty’s Core Premises

In a democracy, how does one protect the people from a government of themselves? How does one protect the minority from the majority?

Mill recognized that in a republic or a democracy, the tyranny of the majority can deny the rights of the minority or dissenter. Individuals can easily be oppressed within a climate of collective opinion and by values that may be popular but that haven’t been critically tested.

Mill presents a simple, powerful belief. The individual is not accountable to society for actions if they concern the interests of no one else. Society is free to express its dislike for the views or actions but should not suppress the individual from expressing or acting.

Suppressing individual action cannot be justified because it would be for the individual’s supposed own good. The individual decides and chooses what’s best, and speaks freely, because freedom of speech and thought is requisite for individual freedom.

Only when the individual’s actions directly harm others is the individual justly subjected to social or legal punishment, and only if society feels such are needed for its protection. That doesn’t mean that damage to the interests of others alone justifies interference. Competitive commerce yields winners who gain and losers who suffer loss. Society or the state does not have the right to impede or interfere in such endeavors.

Louis Brandeis would famously sum up On Liberty’s core premises with: “The right to be free is the right to be left alone.”

The Key Question

Mill asks how much power society can legitimately exert over an individual. That simple question has confounded and divided for eons.

Just because a government is elected by citizens and its representatives are from the people, does not mean threat to individual liberty is absent. Political power can be used by one class to coerce another. And it doesn’t matter if the oppressor is a king or an elected president/legislature.

Mill highlights that government should not coerce the individual even when the majority agrees with government. If everyone save for the single individual were of one view, they do not have the right to suppress the opposing view/desire of the single individual any more than the single person has the right to suppress the view/desire of everyone else.

At times, society can be more oppressive to the individual than even government. And there is a potential massive societal cost to suppressing individual thought and action: the beneficial results that would’ve catalyzed, inspired, and advanced society but for the oppression are not realized.

But libertarians and classic liberals recognize some rational level of rules of conduct are needed in a stable society. Throughout history, societies debated where the best balance was to be found across a spectrum of possibility.

CONTINUE READING

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