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John Stuart Mill
On Liberty by Tucker Peck
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On Liberty
By Tucker Peck
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill vehemently defends all forms of free speech and argues for the free expression of absolutely any opinion. On silencing an opinion, Mill says:

If the opinion is right, [the general public] are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error (23).
The most common contention to Mill’s unlimited advocacy of freedom to express any opinion is that some people believe in hurting other people, and the expression and spread of such views could lead to people’s acting on these opinions, which would result in injury or death that could be prevented by successful suppression of these ideas. Even though On Liberty states, “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” (16), Mill neglects to prohibit the spread of opinions that promote hurting other people. While this may seem to be a contradiction, further analysis shows that Mill’s reasoning remains consistent. On Liberty never gives people license to act on their opinions; at no point does Mill promote civil disobedience or give a person the right to disregard a law that he feels is unjust. Mill suggests that liberty should be extended only as far as it does not harm someone else; however, Mill ardently opposes assuming the infallibility of any notion, including the notion that harming others is wrong. Therefore, Mill’s argument that no opinion should ever be suppressed or moderated shows no flaw in logic and confirms that Mill is correct in endorsing free speech as strongly as he does.

In On Liberty, Mill’s steadfast devotion to the principle that one person should not be allowed to harm another implies that he holds this principle as infallible. However, Mill still grants people the right to speak against this principle that he feels is so certain. Mill explains this seemingly contradictory rationale by saying, “It is not the feeling sure of a doctrine which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side” (30).

In the past forty years, abortion clinics and doctors who perform pregnancy terminations have been the targets of vigilante violence and terrorism. Mill’s endorsement of a person’s right to say, “I believe that abortion is wrong” seems fairly straightforward, but Mill would also support someone who says, “Abortion doctors deserve to be killed.” Also, because Mill supports such an absolute form of freedom of speech, he would also have to support a person’s right to say, “I believe that I should kill abortion doctors.” Even though a doctor’s right to life seems so basic, and a civilian’s right to take someone’s life even if he believes that person to be a murderer seems so wrong, On Liberty asserts that no one can assume the infallibility of the principle “doctors have a right to live.” In the United States, people are free to express the view that abortion doctors should be killed, and it is extremely probable that fewer abortion doctors would have been murdered had this opinion been extinguished. However, Mill draws a clear line between the right a person has to say, “I believe that I should kill abortion doctors,” and the right a person does not have, which is to break the law and kill a person. However, a similar objection On Liberty remains: what if a false opinion becomes popular enough to become a law?

During World War II, there a law existed that required all Jews in German-occupied territory to be incarcerated in concentration camps and allowed them to be killed with impunity. This law led to the death of an estimated six million Jews, and it is quite probable that if the idea that a Jew’s right to life were less than a non-Jew’s were extinguished early enough, those deaths could have been prevented. This poses a considerable challenge to Mill’s philosophy. However, this challenge is groundless, as can best be shown using another example from the same culture.

In modern Germany, Hitler’s book Mein Kampf is banned, since it spreads opinions that perhaps, if silenced, could have saved six million people. However, approximately 26 German marks Mein Kampf will be delivered to the front door of anyone with a credit card. Even if the German government could prevent all Internet companies from shipping copies of Mein Kampf into Germany at http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf. There is absolutely no way for a government to exterminate an opinion. The only thing a government can do is force an opinion to be discussed quietly rather than loudly, which once had almost no power to silence a subversive opinion, and now with the advent of the Internet has absolutely no strength.

Even though the idea that a person of a particular religion has the same right to life and liberty as a person of any other creed seems to be among the most fundamental and irrefutable truths that exist, Mill correctly asserts, “if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility (60).” Since a government cannot prevent an opinion from existing, the only two options it has are to allow the opinion to be heard publicly or to legally prohibit the opinion and therefore make it slightly less public. Not only does silencing an opinion assume infallibility, but “even if the [generally accepted public] opinion be the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice (60-1).” Therefore, allowing all opinions to be heard, no matter how contentious, violent, or clearly incorrect, has no negative aspect (since the legal silencing of opinions is a useless formality), and has the positive power to help the general public further understand why its opinion is correct; and naturally, the expression of a contentious opinion should not be silenced because the possibility exists that it is correct. Thus, Mill is completely justified and correct in On Liberty when he so ardently argues for absolute and unabridged freedom of speech and expression, and because Mill insists that harming another person is wrong, he clearly cannot endorse the unlimited number of violent opinions he allows to be expressed.

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