Free Speech Fundamentals FAIL: J.S. Mill
“A feminine philosopher” I have a love-hate relationship with J.S. Mill's On Liberty . I love that Mill describes the Middle Ages as a time when it was possible for an individual to be a “power in himself...if he had either great talents or a high social position.” Not so, according to Mill, in the present age: At present individuals are lost in the crowd. Mill was writing in 1859, but it could almost be now, don't you think? Does any of this sound familiar? In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. Mill blamed the “whole white population” in America for this state of affairs, while “in England” it was “chiefly the middle class.” Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through the n