the term liberals changed its meaning over the course of the 20th century and
it's confusing in a lot of ways nowadays people use it often especially in the
United States as a synonym for left-wing or progressive but liberalism was a
movement in political philosophy in the history of ideas that was more coherent
than that and that has some aspects of left-wing and some aspects of right-wing
politics so it's not really useful to try to locate it on some political
spectrum the best way to think of liberalism I think is as individualist
rather than status so the classical liberals and I'll just use liberal for
now on to mean classical liberal valued individual rights personal
responsibility democracy they favored democracy because democracy was the rule
of the people by the people rather than the rule by someone else but they saw it
as having some inherent dangers rule of law the same rule should apply to
everyone in society but liberals thought of thought that laws should be
constrained that the there were limits to what to what legal authority could do
to the individual how that could compel the individual liberals see freedom
primarily in terms of what's sometimes called negative freedom freedom from
being compelled either by the state or by other people by society as opposed to
the freedom to do that do various things what kind of political coercion would be
a violation of individual freedom well for Mill the sphere of Liberty this
doctrine of the rights of individuality he calls it which extends to self
sovereignty my sovereignty over my own mind and body to the liberty of us to
associate consensually and to liberties of conscience including freedom of
speech that those are inviolable those those
liberties this is a radical doctrine it's a radical doctor even for liberals
because it means that all forms of compulsion designed to protect people
from themselves to keep people from harming themselves or to force people to
do things that are good for them now it should be said we're talking about sound
minded adults here not not children and people with mental illness but but even
there it would rule out many forms of legislation as fundamentally
illegitimate it would rule out laws that prohibit the use of recreational or
experimental drugs for instance it would rule out seatbelt laws mill thinks all
of that that sort of legislation paternalist legislation is fundamentally
illegitimate not because he thinks there aren't bad choices but he thinks but
because he thinks that it's up to individuals to choose whether they're
going to do the things that are that are genuinely basked for them so let's you
know try try taking that seriously what what would happen if we allowed say
recreational drug use of of all kinds not just legalizing marijuana but
legalizing opiates say well it's hard to justify the legalization of all drugs
but one thing that we can see is the costs and ineffectiveness of prohibition
prohibition hasn't stopped an epidemic of opiate use it has great financial
costs and it also has costs in terms of human lives well it's not clear to me
that mill was right that we have this absolute sovereignty over our bodies I
do think that it's clear that there are
great costs for trying to prohibit what people do to themselves and it can be
argued that we should we should be further towards mill than we actually
are that we should allow people more freedom to decide how they're going to
treat their own mind and body than we actually do there are trade-offs between
different forms of good and most liberals aren't quite as radical as mill
and they're not quite as radical not just because there are some drugs that
they think it's ok to that they think that the costs of prohibition aren't as
great as the costs of legalization would be but also because mandatory
vaccinations for instance are coercively imposed on people who doubt their
efficacy or think that they are that they're dangerous nevertheless most
liberals think that those that mandatory vaccination is worthwhile despite the
sacrifice in an individual freedom that it imposes because this is a case where
the the good of her immunity is so great that that outweighs the bad of
compulsion the crucial point for liberalism then isn't so much whether
going to be an absolutist about self sovereignty as holding as as not just
mill but all liberals do that Liberty ought to be the assumption the
default that it should be hard to justify compulsion especially about
these most fundamental aspects of the way that we live our lives and that we
should be we should be extremely cautious when we do so recognize what
we're giving up as well as what we're gaining
you