John Stuart Mill

"The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement." If Burke was the paragon of conservatism, the author of this completely antithetical quotation, 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill, was just as surely the kernel of modern liberalism. He believed in change for its own sake and political levelling and social progress. As if to spite Burke, he was also a francophile who spent many Provence afternoons wistful for "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."* For better or worse, his name will forever be coupled with the term 'liberal', much like Jimmy Carter with 'stagflation' or Jesse Ventura with 'meathead'. But he is also what would lately be called a classical liberal. This means in some sense that he is no liberal at all, at least not by present standards, and surely it is not for his liberal badge that conservatives paper the walls with his writings. It is for his individualism, an individualism which liberalism has long since abandoned, that John Stuart Mill is loved by friends of liberty.

Mill is often first considered as an agent of utilitarianism. In this he follows in the tutorings of his father James Mill and the family friend Jeremy Bentham, the two of whom are the true architects of this philosophy. The basic tenet of utilitarianism was summed up by Bentham in an early writing: "The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." This kind of thinking is a tough swallow for the Republican appetite. In deference and honor to his father and to his admired Bentham, Mill carries this utilitarianism with him his entire life, attempting to use it as a measure for his own political philosophy; but it was never a good fit. He even wrote a work entitled Utilitarianism (1862) in which he attempts modifications at a system he obviously is at pains to agree with. This includes adding qualitative utility to quantitative utility in the 'greatest happiness' part: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." He clearly was struggling with something he didn't believe in.

The stuff we're really after is in Mill's essay On Liberty (1858), a marvelous spellbinding manifesto which lays out principle after principle of solid individualism amid relentless anti-government salvos. Personal liberty: "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." Freedom of speech: "If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." Free markets: "Speaking generally, there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it. This principle condemns the interferences, once so common, of the legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes of industry." These are precepts of individualism, a culture of individualism shared by all Americans. But while schizophrenic leftists may give lip service to these ideals, and in some demented instances actually believe that they believe in them, most will drop the written word on the nearest bonfire and choose the force of government to pursue their paternalist goals at the drop of a hat.

Mill also wrote about the virtues of representative government and the wickedness of bare mass democracy. In Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Mill attempted to dress the angelic themes of popular government around the subject of how to avoid unenlightened populism. He loved democracy, but he hated the mob. His solution was not to restrict suffrage by requiring ownership of property or assessing a poll tax (common conservative practices of the time), but to net the same effect at the other end: those who were directly elected would be one step removed from political power. "Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government." Another idea was to introduce proportional representation to avoid eeked-out majorities bound to be partisan to social class. While admirable in his effort, such electoral schemes, now prevalent in continental Europe and the Commonwealth, are only fancied by the silly parties on the lunatic fringe and by reporters who enjoy covering a dozen coalition changes between Christmas and New Year's.

In one other respect, Mill is a very convincing Republican: he was a vehement opponent of the movement in Britain to side with the Confederacy in our Civil War. His thoughts on this topic could have been as easily those of Abraham Lincoln—or George W. Bush:

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse ... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice—is often the means of their regeneration."

This is bedrock neo-conservatism. How fitting that Mill, a classical liberal, produces such gems, to be dusted off in good time by erstwhile liberals who redefine themselves as neo-conservatives.

Liberals no longer adhere to the ideals of individualism and liberty that Mill expressed. Examples of this are legion: personal liberty discarded for "public" health; freedom of speech discarded for group sensitivities; free markets discarded for state activism. Conservatives, on the other hand, given the same individualist goals, are dependable compatriots. They recognize that certain truths are absolute, inviolable, timeless. By definition, liberals will not hold to principle or cling to absolutes, for theirs is an ever shifting movement of the age, or of the moment. Liberals have but two absolutes: change, and the force of government to affect it. "I didn't leave the Democratic Party," Ronald Reagan often said, "the Democratic Party left me." Mill may have been a liberal in his time, but liberalism has long since left him.

* "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" was the slogan of the French Revolution, which Mill embraced as a whole, but was critical of in particulars. Ironically, it was also the title of a 1873 book by James Fitzjames Stephen which was intensely critical of Mill's philosophy.