From: J. S. Mill ‘On Liberty’ (Chapter 4)
“As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on no better grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are different from theirs, do not practise their religious observances, especially their religious abstinences.
To cite a rather trivial example, nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating pork. There are few acts which Christians and Europeans regard with more unaffected disgust, than Mussulmans regard this particular mode of satisfying hunger. It is, in the first place, an offence against their religion; but this circumstance by no means explains either the degree or the kind of their repugnance; for wine also is forbidden by their religion, and to partake of it is by all Mussulmans accounted wrong, but not disgusting.”
——–> Comment: JS Mill would no doubt have fully approved of multiculturalism. Following his argument, it would be ok to stone an adulteress to death. He goes on to say…..
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“It also appears so to me, but I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.”
—–> Comment: no comment
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“No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk…..”
—–> Comment: (!!)
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“If civilization has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilization. A civilization that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization receives notice to quit, the better. It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians.”
—–> Comment: Here’s the other side of Mill. This visionary paragraph should be pasted prominently in all public places in the USA.
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Full text of Mills ‘On Liberty’ (chapter 4) can be found online at:
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/on_liberty_chapter_4.htm
