Signs Liberalism’s Slow Suicide Is Finally Complete

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Mill set out to make a case for liberty that was not based on “natural rights” but on utilitarianism. He starts with the principle that everyone should be allowed to do whatever he likes, so long as it doesn’t harm others: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

But what constitutes a “harm”? Refusing to give someone a job? Charging “too much” rent for an apartment? Hurting someone’s feelings? To limit the concept of “harm,” Mill emphasized the difference between the private and the public, and between ideas and actions. The ideas you hold privately are nobody’s business but your own, while actions you take publicly might be harmful to others and can in principle be controlled by government. Here is how he summed up his argument:

The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.

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At the height of liberalism, in the early 1970s, Ayn Rand summed up the contradiction this way: “The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe—but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.” Obviously, you can’t be both of these things at the same time. This strict separation of ideas from action, of the private from the public falls apart the moment you try to apply it to reality. What’s the point of being free to think if you’re not free to act on your thinking? And how can we say that private thinking and private preferences have no effect on others, when they clearly influence the way people act?


Signs Liberalism’s Slow Suicide Is Finally Complete
Campus protests against the ACLU are a sign that American 'liberalism' is being destroyed by the forces it unleashed and its own inherent contradictions.
 

Kyle

ULTRA-F###ING-MAGA!
PREMO Member
To hell with slow suicide. I want to see them hurl themselves into the volcano.
 

LightRoasted

If I may ...
If I may ...

My personal philosophy is this; as long you don't harm the person or property of another, it should not matter what you do. Want to do drugs? More power to you. Pay a woman to blow you? Hell yeah. Drive drunk? Sure. However, if, by your actions, while being drunk and driving, injure, or cause the death of another, then be prepared to face decades in prison or the death penalty. And while everyone is free to associate with anyone they choose, I'm pretty sure those that do and act in certain ways will be ostracized, pretty much like they are now. Here's a good book kinda on the subject, a good read. Ain't nobody's business if you do.
 
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