progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
It is still intolerable for the government to interfere with our individual activities except
where it is necessary to interfere with them in order to free them.
This is a terrifying remark. It states that the Government, whatever that means,
determines on its own what makes us free. One would have thought the issue was settled
in 1776!
8.2 INDIVIDUALISM
The libertarian view is individualism with little if any government. The individualists
seeks government to just enforce the rules of the transactions which have been agreed to
and in addition the individualists sees the government's role to enforce negative rights,
and looks towards a few if any positive rights. The Progressives view of individualism, as
exemplified by Croly, is the raw libertarian individualism of the frontier. The individual
against the society in general.
This libertarian individualism is not what we speak of. The individualism we speak of is
what the founders truly had in mind, a government assuring the equal and equitable rights
of each citizen, and protecting citizens from the encroachment of a government akin to
what the founders had seen and experienced from the King.
There is an interesting discussion of Mill and individualism in the context of the new
liberalism of the 19th century 214 :
"Mill's liberalism is committed to a largely secular state, democratic political institutions
in which the franchise is widespread, private property rights, market economies, equal
social and economic opportunity, and a variety of personal and civic liberties. To
appreciate the significance of his brand of liberalism, it is helpful to focus on the
substance of his conception of liberal essentials — the package of individual liberties and
state responsibilities that he endorses — and the way he justifies his conception of liberal
essentials. Millian liberalism is not laissez-faire liberalism, and it justifies liberal
essentials as a way of promoting the common good.
The distinctiveness of this brand of liberalism is perhaps best seen in contrast with two
other conceptions of liberalism — a more libertarian conception of liberal essentials and
their justification that dominated the British Liberal Party at mid-century and the sort of
contemporary political liberalism, currently fashionable in Anglo-American
philosophical circles, that justifies liberal essentials as required if the state is to be
neutral among rival conceptions of the good life that its citizens might hold.
It may be useful to try to locate Millian liberalism within the debate between so-called
Old and New Liberalism within the British Liberal Party in the second half of the
214 See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/
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