JS Mill can also be considered a fraudster, due to his status as a colonial official in the British East India joint-stock corporation, as well as his writings celebrating imperialism as the white man's burden. I wish texts like On Liberty could be read as written, but history is still a nightmare from which I am trying to wake up.
True, but that does not detract from the free speech principle set out by Mill. One can hold, by modern standards, reactionary views, but still uphold free speech – the two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, your namesake, Friedrich Engels famously referred to “non-historic peoples” which would now be considered a reactionary epithet. The past does not always have to be a nightmare on the brain of the living.
JS Mill can also be considered a fraudster, due to his status as a colonial official in the British East India joint-stock corporation, as well as his writings celebrating imperialism as the white man's burden. I wish texts like On Liberty could be read as written, but history is still a nightmare from which I am trying to wake up.
True, but that does not detract from the free speech principle set out by Mill. One can hold, by modern standards, reactionary views, but still uphold free speech – the two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, your namesake, Friedrich Engels famously referred to “non-historic peoples” which would now be considered a reactionary epithet. The past does not always have to be a nightmare on the brain of the living.
Mill is not at the root of free speech. Hemlock is.