{"id":11543,"date":"2022-04-11T23:49:07","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T13:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=11543"},"modified":"2024-01-14T17:15:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-14T06:15:27","slug":"je-suis-mill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/11\/je-suis-mill\/","title":{"rendered":"Je Suis Mill"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mp_wrapper\">\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-excerpt\">\n    <p>This is an edited extract from a dinner speech to the Liberal Club of the University of Melbourne, delivered on 10 December 2021\nAbout a decade ago, I sat down with a group of men, all a few years older than me, for dinner. We had all gone to the same primary school, we had all come from old Catholic Democratic Labor Party (DLP) families, we had all found that we had wound up working in, or on, China and that we had become largely secular in our beliefs.\u00a0\nI\u2019d brought along copies of my book Thunder From the Silent Zone: Rethinking China and gave each of them a copy before we ordered our meal. To my fascination, one of them remarked, as he took my book in hand, \u201cOf course, it\u2019s well-known that you\u2019re an extreme right-winger.\u201d I was astonished. \u201cIt is?!\u201d I exclaimed. \u201cWell known to whom? Based on what?\u201d\nHe didn\u2019t answer my questions. I went on: \u201cI\u2019m pretty much a John Stuart Mill kind of chap. If that makes me an extreme right-winger, we\u2019re in serious trouble!\u201d\nI think we are in fairly serious trouble, and I think we need to define our terms rather carefully if we are to get out of that trouble.\u00a0\nMill made less of an impression on me as a young man than he should have done, or perhaps would have done if I\u2019d had a liberal upbringing. It was Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Trotsky, Sartre and Camus who revolutionised my adolescent thinking after leaving Catholic secondary school. I had not had a liberal upbringing. I\u2019d had a conservative Catholic one and I threw it over at the age of 18...<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-message\">\n    <hr style=\"width: 100%;max-width: 1000px !important;height: 5px;border-width: 0;color: red;background-color: red\" \/>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">\n<h3><em>You're part way through this article. 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Log in below.<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-login-form-wrap\">\n            \n<div class=\"mp_wrapper mp_login_form\">\n                  <!-- mp-login-form-start -->     <form name=\"mepr_loginform\" id=\"mepr_loginform\" class=\"mepr-form\" action=\"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/login\/\" method=\"post\">\n            <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_username\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n                              <label for=\"user_login\">Username<\/label>\n        <\/div>\n        <input type=\"text\" name=\"log\" id=\"user_login\" value=\"\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_password\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n          <label for=\"user_pass\">Password<\/label>\n          <div class=\"mp-hide-pw\">\n            <input type=\"password\" name=\"pwd\" id=\"user_pass\" value=\"\" \/>\n            <button type=\"button\" class=\"button mp-hide-pw hide-if-no-js\" data-toggle=\"0\" aria-label=\"Show password\">\n              <span class=\"dashicons dashicons-visibility\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span>\n            <\/button>\n          <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n            <div>\n        <label><input name=\"rememberme\" type=\"checkbox\" id=\"rememberme\" value=\"forever\" \/> Remember Me<\/label>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n      <div class=\"submit\">\n        <input type=\"submit\" name=\"wp-submit\" id=\"wp-submit\" class=\"button-primary mepr-share-button \" value=\"Log In\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"redirect_to\" value=\"\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_process_login_form\" value=\"true\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_is_login_page\" value=\"false\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/form>\n    <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n    <div class=\"mepr-login-actions\">\n        <a\n          href=\"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/login\/?action=forgot_password\"\n          title=\"Click here to reset your password\"\n        >\n          Forgot Password        <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n\n      \n    <!-- mp-login-form-end --> \n  <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an edited extract from a dinner speech to the Liberal Club of the University of Melbourne, delivered on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[417,658,340,581,645,75],"coauthors":[151],"class_list":["post-11543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-john-stuart-mill","tag-liberal-party","tag-liberalism","tag-philosophy","tag-premium"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11543"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11547,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543\/revisions\/11547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11543"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}