Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
The parental social order has no moral basis for coercing us to do anything against our will – even for our own good, let alone the good of others! He was a utilitarian rather than a libertarian proponent of natural rights.
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill.
Mill’s famous essay is an illuminating reading experience, even if you read it in college. Its thesis is to define ‘the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual’. Its conclusion is that ‘the sole principle for which mankind are [sic] warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of any of their number is self-protection’. He goes on to say that the parental social order has no moral basis for coercing us to do anything against our will – even for our own good, let alone the good of others! He was a utilitarian rather than a libertarian proponent of natural rights, which disqualified him as a lover of liberty for Rand, but file that away and read on, unperturbed.
What’s the difference?
Utilitarian political philosophy is based on the greatest good for the greatest number. Libertarian political philosophy is individual rights. This essay is about why society and the government will take over more and more of our lives and tell us what to do if we don’t resist. It’s the natural way of things.
Can people resist?
No, we can’t resist. The price of liberty is vigilance and we aren’t very vigilant people. Imagine how John Stuart Mill would feel if he were made to wear a seatbelt because the federal government tells him so. His idea is that there is no reason for society or the government to infringe on individual decision-making except for self-protection and the protection of others. We ought to defend our individual liberties. He even saw in Britain in his time a tendency for the government and society to accumulate power – what libertarians have been worrying about ever since.
But aren’t human beings social animals? Aren’t we like ants in an anthill?
Some are but some, like Isaac Newton, prefer never to see another human being as long as he lived. He worked in solitude and yet produced some of the greatest benefits of mankind. So, no. Some are and some of us are not.
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Anne C Heller is a magazine editor and journalist. She has been the managing editor of The Antioch Review, fiction editor of Esquire and Redbook, the features editor of Lear’s, and the executive editor of the magazine development group at Condé Nast Publications, with a special emphasis on money and finance. In her biography of libertarian Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, she documents the life of one of capitalism’s most fervent defenders. She blogs on libertarianism and associated issues at www.annecheller.com/
