To be free is a choice, not a right

Portrait of John Surart Mill
via Wikipedia

This article by Richard Reeves on The Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ blog should be compulsory reading (“The value of a self-governed life”). John Stuart Mill was one of the most influential writers of his time, or the times since, and his exploration of the relationship between liberty and choice has probably never been bettered.

Despite all the protestations of commitment to liberty and freedom today, it has rarely been under greater threat, whether from those who wish to stamp their own religious or political views on the world at large; those who claim to be saving us from terrorism by removing our liberties to resist being saved in their chosen way; or those who see conformity as the best route to profit, and freedom as inefficient in economic terms.

For Mill, liberty was always a choice. As Reeves says:

Mill’s idea of liberty requires freedom of opinion, expression and lifestyle in order to produce the broadest possible palette of ways of life for us to choose from. The state should not impose a single view of the best way to live – for Mill, the idea of a centrally imposed national curriculum was horrifying. Equality before the law, and rights to fair trial were important precisely because they allowed people to live the way they chose, even if eccentric or even disgusting to the majority, so long as they did not actively harm others in so doing.

“For Mill, liberty could therefore be threatened as easily by peer pressure, majority opinion and social intolerance, together creating ‘a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression’,” Reeves writes. He is absolutely correct, in my view. What does it mean to be ‘free’ only to be forced to follow the dictates of current social norms or the intolerant ideas of bigots of all kinds?

If Patrick Henry were alive today, would he still proclaim: “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! ” Or would he keep quiet for fear of being thought eccentric, an oddball, an extremist, or ‘not a team player’. I suspect that, if he were seeking a job in most current organizations, he would do well to be happy with whatever could be “purchased at the price of chains and slavery.”

It’s ironic that, the more some politicians and leaders preach the rights of freedom, the less they are willing to accept the consequences of a free society, including tolerance of those whose view they dislike, even though they do no harm to anyone else.

Technorati Tags: freedom, liberty, social tyranny, fitting in, being a team player, following convention, peer pressures

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