On Liberty

⚖The case for it

The 'harm principle': your freedom ends where harm to others begins. Mill's defense of individual liberty, free speech, and 'experiments in living' is the intellectual backbone of liberal society. His worry about the 'tyranny of the majority' (social conformity crushing individuality) is more relevant in the age of social media than it was in Victorian England. Short, clear, and permanently necessary.

— the canon

✕The case against

Everyone cites the harm principle; nobody can say what counts as harm, and Mill couldn't either. His distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding acts collapses on contact with any real case. And the famous defense of liberty pauses to exempt 'barbarians,' for whom despotism is fine if it improves them. The empire's most eloquent liberal kept the empire.

— the honest librarian