Mill and the liberalist tradition

The ideas of John Stuart Mill, explored in On Liberty, give much legitimization to the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. Mill describes human liberty as rooted in free thought and pursuits. For Mill, the individual is the locus of rights because the individual is the sovereign who can decide his/her own subjective appeal to freedom or rights. Personal opinion valued over the majority is another concept that Mill proposes. This advanced form of thinking allows individuals to take hold of their own political affairs and defines what an ideal politics ought to be because governmental coercion destroys the possibility of an individual appeal to liberty.
Mill’s ideas of liberty rooted in individuality are...