Letters on Liberty are exactly what they say they are.
Launched in December 2020 and published by the Academy of Ideas, they are short essays (less than 3,000 words apiece), each one dedicated to achieving a freer society.
Titles to date include Risking It All: The Freedom to Gamble (Jon Bryan), The Future of Free Speech (Jacob Mchangama), The Liberating Power of Education (Harley Richardson), and Freedom Is No Illusion (Frank Furedi).
Others include Liberty in a Narcissistic Age (Roslyn Fuller), Greens: The New Neo-Colonists (Austin Williams), and Beyond the Culture Wars (Jacob Reynolds).
Letters on Liberty are published in bundles of three and the latest titles, just out, are Against Reparations (James Heartfield), AI: Separating Man from Machine (Sandy Starr), and Beyond the Harm Principle (Rob Lyons).
All three are worth reading but it's Rob's essay that will arguably be of most interest to readers of this blog.
He takes John Stuart Mill's 'harm principle' – which first appeared in On Liberty in 1859 and is often quoted by libertarians – and demonstrates how it has been hijacked and weaponised against individual freedom.
According to Mill, the actions of individuals should only be restricted or punished if they harm others.
That, of course, was the justification for the smoking ban, which was introduced in the UK after it was claimed, but never remotely proved, that 11,000 non-smokers were dying each year as a result of passive smoking.
The problem, writes Rob, is that, 'If we take the notion of harm to its extremes, almost anything we don't like could be described as harmful', and that's exactly what is happening today.
Today the concept of 'harm' covers not just physical harm but anything that may cause offence and therefore 'harm' us in other ways.
But as Rob correctly points out, 'If we want to live in a free society, we have to tolerate things we don't like.'
How, then, can we rescue the harm principle from the 'meddlesome opponents of freedom'? According to Rob, there is a strong case for amending it as follows:
We should be free to do what we want as long as it does not harm others where they cannot avoid that harm.
Would that make a difference? In theory it might. In practice, I'm not sure. As Rob himself admits:
The trouble with trying to rescue the harm principle, by trying to find a more modest and reasonable version of it, is that reasonableness seems to be in short supply.
Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the war on tobacco.
As we know, anti-smoking zealots are never happy and as soon as they achieve one goal they immediately target another, regardless of whether it's fair or reasonable or based on proven physical harm to others. (Outdoor smoking bans, for example.)
Freedom of speech is also under threat because of perceived 'harm' to others, and Rob covers that issue too.
Beyond the Harm Principle is available to download free here.
Alternatively, to purchase or subscribe to the print edition of this and other Letters on Liberty, click here.