On Liberty

⚖The case for it

Chapter two earns the shelf space; the rest earns a footnote. The line he draws between private and public will not hold still, and the exception he carves for colonized peoples he judged unready to govern themselves is indefensible; he never repaired it. The psychology outlives the argument. He saw that an opinion no one contests stops being held and starts being worn, and that a village, a newspaper, or a crowd of strangers can flatten a person more thoroughly than any court. Read three paragraphs with your phone face up beside you.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Everyone cites the harm principle; nobody can say what counts as harm, and Mill couldn't either. His distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding acts collapses on contact with any real case. And the famous defense of liberty pauses to exempt 'barbarians,' for whom despotism is fine if it improves them. The empire's most eloquent liberal kept the empire.

— the honest librarian