John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1849) writes that you could basically steal from atheists without consequence, because they can't swear oaths and therefore can't testify against a thief. (He ridicules that logic, because if they're honest enough to admit to atheism, then...) https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/1116710955264557056 …
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Long argument short: my interest in Mill has been sparked by free speech grifters. I've been paying close attention to 17-19c arguments for free speech and until I looked at Mill's, I couldn't find a "classical liberal" even remotely close to the JP/Quil crowd.
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Mill's work is reasoning by hand-waving. His "take down" of Kant reads like everyone was too polite to tell him that that's not philosophizing. I am starting to suspect he may be the "intellectual" originator of free speech grifting, including for some of the reasons you mention.
End of conversation
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