http://www.salon.com/opinion/freedom/2003/08/12/on_liberty/index.html(SNIP)
But it fell to John Stuart Mill, in his densely lucid essay "On Liberty" (1859), to give the concept of liberty the shape and scope by which we recognize it today. If the word "liberty" now conjures a vision of unchained minds more than an image of unfettered possessions, we have Mill's persuasive prose to thank. "On Liberty" widened the Victorian liberal conception of freedom from the realm of economics to that of the intellect and the spirit, and no one has ever been able to force it back into the dismal science's bottle. (SNIP)
"On Liberty" is best known for its avowal that "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign," and it defines its "one very simple principle" as follows: "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection." This formulation continues today to animate the rhetoric of politics; surely that is Mill's voice echoing through British Prime Minister Tony Blair's recent speech to the U.S. Congress, declaring that the war in Iraq was fought for the freedom "to be you so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others." (SNIP)
The antidote to such stagnation, he maintained, was not simply toleration of nonconformists but vigorous engagement with "heretical positions": "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation -- those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error."Saddly the article is for subscribers only. Real shame.
However I think I got the best paragraphs.
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