Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Personal liberty cannot flourish without civility and respect for others. Drawing on J.S. Mill and historic reformers, this piece explores freedom, peaceful protest and the common good.

I read again over this last weekend a quote by J.S. Mills from his essay On Liberty. It was in a piece by Chris Ulhman, and it was about the lack of public civility that has developed here in Australia.

Mills is often quoted in support of personal liberty — and properly so, to an extent. For example, he writes strongly against interference by the State on the personal opinions of citizens, and one of his basic assumptions is that “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

But he was also what I would describe as a ‘common good conservative’. That is, Mills’ understanding of personal liberty does not extend to rank individualism — for example, immediately after the statement about individual sovereignty, Mills notes that “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians.” — that is, social orderliness, and liberty within that, only works when people have learned civility in conduct. That orderliness is, in turn, based on a version of humanity founded on the influence of Judeo-Christianity.

Thus, Mills describes as assumed knowledge that opinions and actions do not have the same licence: “No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions.” He describes the relationship between words and actions in some detail, by clearly saying that people, in expressing their opinions because of their liberty, should not bring pain to others: “The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.”

Indeed, Mills was very clear about the authority of those responsible for civic life in the face of such nuisance behaviour: “A soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it…”; and “For such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment.”

What Can Social Change Look Like?

If we take Mills seriously, then a case can be made that our current angry socialists and angry fundamentalist Islamists treat their liberty perversely. They intentionally stomp on the freedoms of others to go about their daily lives while screaming (and at times screeching) for a change somewhere. It can be about the proposed (and thoroughly overstated, hyped and alarmist) climate changes; and now, of course, the ongoing disruptive protests about overseas conflicts that are some thousands of years old.

What they bring to this social unrest is a stratification of people groups, and they seek to make the lives of the targeted group intentionally uncomfortable. At times, the discomfort morphs into making others’ lives unsafe or property insecure. All this is done under the name of liberty and based on some apparent flimsy implied broader freedoms.

This appears to be the current state of play in New South Wales, where I live. Whether it is on the streets with undisciplined children on electric motorbikes and drunken adults, or protestors blocking streets, in my lifetime, my home suburbs have become less safe.

Some Heroes

Where can we find some examples of change that prevailed over such incivility? There are four highlights of ‘regular people’ making a difference through strong but peaceful protest across history.

The first is Nelson Mandela. He personally suffered for speaking out for the good in his land. But his peaceful, but profoundly strong resistance to the damaging norms of his time brought civic fruit that others thought impossible.

A second is Mahatma Gandhi — who learned his peaceful protest approach in the same land as Mandela — and both through the influence of Christian teachers. But his application in India was inspired. Just like Mandela, Gandhi suffered for his courage through his assassination after achieving his great work.

Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech must be one of the most heart-moving and convincing sermons ever spoken and broadcast in the history of mankind.

And perhaps one of the founders of such thinking and speaking was William Wilberforce, who not only had slavery abolished in England, but then convinced the realm to spend millions of their money to stop other nations trading in slaves. It was he who understood that to bring about big social change, attention must be paid to appropriate respect for all through — yes, improving manners. He ran the two campaigns simultaneously. As the Colson Centre notes:

Wilberforce’s work highlights the challenging reality Christians face in every cultural moment: the deep brokenness of this fallen world. Wilberforce engaged the culture of his time by highlighting the inherent dignity of humanity, most notably by fighting against slavery. His work in the “reformation of manners” was a major contributor to not only making slavery illegal, but also, eventually, unthinkable.   

But Now?

I know not of any strong, heart-gripping orators of our age here in Australia. The socialists who are wannabe communists are loud, provocative, arrogantly confident, and say ‘whatever it takes’ to distract people from the real causes of pain. Woefully, such cries and pseudo-laments are too easily badged under the blast of ‘liberty and freedom of speech’ rhetoric.

They should be reminded that they are not free to speak and preach death to others. They are not free to stop others sharing what they believe about life, marriage, sex and hope. They are not free to educate children without parental choice. They are not free to stop faith communities employing others who voluntarily want to join with like-minded people. And they are not free to tell others they can pray, and how (and ironies of ironies, when people who do not believe in prayer ban other people praying! And then will happily engage in pagan smoking ceremonies…).

When might our leaders read J.S. Mills more fully and carefully? And when might anyone have the courage to compare and contrast Mills and others to this thinking that again seems to be driving some important developments overseas and here:

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

[the end of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels]

Strangely, in our times, those who are supposedly busting their chains for so-called freedoms seem to be the duped, comfortable, elite-thinking, sheltered, pleasure-seeking individualists. They will lose to the actual resource elites. And everyone else is being primed to also be losers, while being promised freedom from oppression.

The apostle Paul’s notes were much more realistic:

¹³ For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters.
But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature.
Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.
¹⁴ For the whole law can be summed up in this one command:
“Love your neighbour as yourself.”
¹⁵ But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out!
Beware of destroying one another.
— Galatians 5:13-15 (NLT)

God help us all.

___

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: Student protest against Pauline Hanson at the Australian National University, August 2026.