Heavy Going With 19th Century Thinkers

John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" is the kind of book you were probably supposed to read in high school or college and just skimmed through, if you read it at all...

Irony is, of course, Mill's book is one of those seminal works that are part of "climate of opinion" for most liberal Western thought.

Mill is surprisingly modern yet shows a cultural bias that would brand him today as politically incorrect. 

He would, I think, consider most third world countries not ready for democracy- -or freedom--

and just casually denounce the Taliban as barbarians... would also have harsh words about countries like Saudi Arabia and say they treated women as slaves.

Well, who says a mid 19th century writer is to be judged by the catchwords of today-- you have to see him in historical context,

Much of what Mill writes isn't all that well organized and sometimes seems to pose more questions that it answers. This is definitely not light reading.

To me, one of the best endorsements for Mill is that he enraged Carlyle. I had to read the pompous, reactionary Carlyle in college-- had idiot teacher who worshipped him.  Didn't say right things about the "Master" and didn't get a very good grade...this was before I learned a basic trick of college: if you have an idiot teacher, simply parrot back their ideas to the jerks and you will be rewarded with praise--such comments as "brilliant insight" will be typical.

Why is Mill important? He helped shaped the everyday thinking of most Western democracies in a very basic way... and, is as often the case, you could quote Mill to justify or condemn Bush's invasion of Iraq, for instance.

Mill caught on to something a lot of earlier Enlightenment authors missed: the majority is not always right and cannot ride roughshod over the views of minorities or "eccentric" individuals.

Mill takes the right to dissent as a given.. and would be appalled, but not surprised by the way dissent is being treated in such countries as Iran.