John Stuart Mill, the original thick libertarian. Ralph Raico: “Worst of all was Mill’s deformation of the concept of liberty itself. Liberty, it seems, is a condition that is threatened not only by physical aggression on the part of the state or other institutions or individuals. Rather, “society” often poses even graver dangers to individual freedom. This it achieves through “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling,” the tendency “to impose, by other ways than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them,” to “compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own”. True liberty requires “autonomy,” for adopting “the traditions or customs of other people” is simply to engage in “ape-like” imitation.” Ludwig von Mises: John Stuart Mill is an epigone of classical liberalism and, especially in his later years, under the influence of his wife, full of feeble compromises. He slips slowly into socialism and is the originator of the thoughtless confounding of liberal and socialist ideas that led to the decline of English liberalism and to the undermining of the living standards of the English people.
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 15:57:20 +0000