“The right to be left alone,” said Justice William O. Douglas,
“is indeed the beginning of all freedom.”
And regarding the authority of society over the freedom of the
individual, where should the line be drawn? What’s the right
balance between individual independence and collective social
control?
John Stuart Mill, arguably the most influential 19th-century
British political writer, asked those questions in his most popular
essay, On Liberty, published in 1859. Mill’s position is
that “the individual is not accountable to society for his actions
in so far as these concern the interests of no person but
himself.”
Singer Billy Holiday, nearly a century later, said the same
thing: “I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business
but my own.”
Individually or collectively, the sole end that justifies
interfering with another’s liberty is “self-protection,” contends
Mill. “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. His own good, either physical or moral, is
not a sufficient warrant.”
The problem is that the definition of “self-protection” can be
quite elastic. Opponents of gay marriage, for instance, argue that
they’re protecting the institution of marriage. The
Economist magazine, in contrast, editorially takes a
position that’s more in sync with Mill: “Why should one set of
loving, consenting adults be denied a right that other such adults
have and which, if exercised, will do no damage to anyone
else?”
Citing infidelity and divorce rates, the Economist
points out that the “weakening of the institution of marriage has
been heterosexuals’ doing, not gays.” In point of fact,
Massachusetts, home to same-sex marriages, has the nation’s lowest
divorce rate, with marriages coming apart at roughly half the rate
as in the red and more born-again states of Kentucky, Mississippi
and Arkansas.
On flag burning, one can quite easily deduce Mill’s opinion
about whether a constitutional amendment is necessary for
“self-protection.”
Mill makes the case not just for individual liberty from
unwarranted government control but also a case against undue
interference by “the collective authority of public opinion”
against “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of
political oppression.”
It’s by way of this “tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling,”
warns Mill, that society attempts to compel conformity and “fetter
the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any
individuality not in harmony with its ways.”
The passion to impose this social repression, to enchain the
spirit of others, Mill asserts, has its roots in arrogance, envy
and prejudices, but most commonly in people’s “desires or fears for
themselves.”
Conversely, what fosters social progress is liberty, “absolute
freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical and
speculative, scientific, moral or theological,” counsels Mill. “We
can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is
a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil
still. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live
as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as
seems good to the rest.”
Societal advancement, Mill maintains, occurs in an atmosphere
that encourages “different opinions,” “deviation from custom,”
“spontaneity,” “varieties of characters,” “different experiments of
living,” and “eccentricity of conduct.”
Constrain that diversity, hold down what some might judge to be
behavioral or ideological excesses, and “human capacities are
withered and starved,” Mill asserts. We become “automatons in human
form,” losers to a “despotism of custom” and a tyranny of opinion
that thwarts our ambition, energy, courage and individuality.
Mill wasn’t optimistic: “Society has now fairly got the better
of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is
not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and
preferences. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief
danger of the time.”
In place of individuality, Mill saw a growing conformity to a
deadening and approved standard: “And that standard, express or
tacit, is to desire nothing strongly. Its ideal of character is to
be without any marked character — to maim by compression, like a
Chinese lady’s foot, every part of human nature which stands out
prominently and tends to make the person markedly dissimilar in
outline to commonplace humanity.”
