Chris McClelland, Author

  John Stuart Mill was a Victorian writer, philosopher and political thinker, and gave much time and attention to the importance of individual liberties.  He particularly mourned the state of Far Eastern and what we today call “third world” countries, not only for their dearth of wealth and low standards of living, but also because, East of the Levant, most people scarcely saw themselves as individuals at all.  He cites China as an example, not only as a nation where individuals have little free will to be exercised, but also he foretells of a time when China will rise in power by harnessing the energy of the collective strength of the people, and balance it with free will.  This so-called balance of individualism and collectivism is still a ways off for the Chinese people, but they have already risen in international power to the point of being the industrial West’s main threat to the global stability it now shakily maintains. I think it’s important, on this Independence Day weekend (