On Liberty (1859) [pdf]

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for. - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It is certainly possible to make a variation of your statement without such loaded language.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but you've also made an overly shallow (and uninteresting) characterization of the ethics underlying progressive causes.

Wow, well I have to voice some public disbelief over this statement. Maybe you just write it as a reflex?

You think personal liberties are at a low point? I must live in a different world.

We are in the age of the greatest emphasis on personal choice, personal satisfaction, and personal decision making in recent history. If anything we are in danger of the opposite -- personal freedoms making us unable to do or support things that are for the communal good.

Everything that is marketed to us, that enters our political discourse, that is stressed in our daily lives (as well as what many people seek to display to others) is about you deciding what you want and not having to put up with someone telling you what to do. "You do your way", "how you want it, when you want it", etc. The ease of finding subcultures and not having to have your individual interests and quirks diluted by a generic community. The ease of creating/joining isolated interest groups and segregating onesself from your neighbors, community, state, country. (This is not a new thesis -- written about extensively such as in "Bowling Alone".)

It's driven by our consumerism, of course, but it leaks into our government and other aspects of societal life very strongly. Note today, even governments almost feel they cannot force people to act in ways that benefit the community, and have to ask politely people to do things like wear masks (for fear of backlash and being voted out for violating people's personal liberties -- or what they believe are their liberties).

JSM was writing in an age where tyranny (or lack of recourse to rebel against tyranny) and material deprivation were common, social mobility was almost non-existent, and the notion that you could have a prosperous life without relying on the rest of society (and its rigid rules) laughable.

If you feel that (at least in the US) personal liberty is at risk, I shudder to think how your head would not explode in a real authoritarian country.

> This conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labours and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation.

> These conditions society is justified in enforcing, at all costs to those who endeavour to withhold fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going to the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law.

> As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion.

> But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases, there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

> It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other’s conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people to their good than whips and scourges, either of the literal or the metaphorical sort. I am the last person to undervalue the self-regarding virtues; they are only second in importance, if even second, to the social.

I cannot imagine what the other people in this thread think he wrote to respond as if it supports their idea of society not having authority over policing harmful conduct.

It's good if you use it as an indicator, but it's currently used as "evidence" and as a justification to give certain advantages to certain groups under the (almost always unproven) assumption that there's inequality of opportunity. For example: quota laws, and affirmative action in general. Quota laws and affirmative action that are notably pushed by progressive mob that I talk about, so I don't see the mischaracterization.

The distinction didn't hold water in 1954, and I don't think it holds water in 2020. Consistent inequality on the basis of sex or race is the principle evidence that there is inequality "of opportunity."