On Liberty or Is Bill Cosby Right

On Liberty (Library of Essential Reading Series)

Author: John Stuart Mill

Published in 1859, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty presented one of the most eloquent defenses of individual freedom in nineteenth-century social and political philosophy and is today perhaps the most widely-read liberal argument in support of the value of liberty. Mill's passionate advocacy of spontaneity, individuality, and diversity, along with his contempt for compulsory uniformity and the despotism of popular opinion, has attracted both admiration and condemnation.

About the Author:
John Stuart Mill was born in a suburb of London on May 20, 1806. By the age of ten he was reading classical authors in the original Greek and Latin, was proficient in history, algebra, and geometry, and soon after began to study logic, political economy, and law. He was elected to Parliament in 1865 and held the Radical seat for Westminster for the next three years. Mill died in Avignon, France, on May 7, 1873.

Table of Contents:

	Editorial Note
	A Note on the Life and Thought of John Stuart Mill	1
	A Reading of On Liberty	28
	On Liberty
Ch. I	Introductory	73
Ch. II	Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion	86
Ch. III	Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being	121
Ch. IV	Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual	139
Ch. V	Applications	156
	Rethinking On Liberty
	A Freedom Both Personal and Political	179
	On Liberty: A Revaluation	197
	Mill's Liberty and the Problem of Authority	208
	Mill as a Critic of Culture and Society	224
	Bibliography	247

Book about: The Tai Chi Chuans Internal Secrets or Soul Full Eating

Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?

Author: Michael Eric Dyson

The acclaimed "hip-hop intellectual" exposes the raw nerve of class and generational warfare in black America with this provocative defense of impoverished African Americans

Nothing exposed the class and generational divide in black America more starkly than Bill Cosby's now-infamous assault on the black poor when he received an NAACP award in the spring of 2004. The comedian-cum-social critic lamented the lack of parenting, poor academic performance, sexual promiscuity, and criminal behavior among what he called the "knuckleheads" of the African-American community. Even more surprising than his comments, however, was the fact that his audience laughed and applauded.

Best-selling writer, preacher, and scholar Michael Eric Dyson uses the Cosby brouhaha as a window on a growing cultural divide within the African-American community. According to Dyson, the "Afristocracy" -lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, bankers, civil rights leaders, entertainers, and other professionals-looks with disdain upon the black poor who make up the "Ghettocracy" -single mothers on welfare, the married, single, and working poor, the incarcerated, and a battalion of impoverished children. Dyson explains why the black middle class has joined mainstream America to blame the poor for their troubles, rather than tackling the systemic injustices that shape their lives. He exposes the flawed logic of Cosby's diatribe and offers a principled defense of the wrongly maligned black citizens at the bottom of the social totem pole. Displaying the critical prowess that has made him the nation's preeminent spokesman for the hip-hop generation, Dyson challenges us all-black and white-to confront the social problems that the civil rights movement failed to solve.

Publishers Weekly

Last May, iconic comedian Cosby raised a storm with a dyspeptic rant about the self-destructive failures of the black underclass: "knuckleheads" without parents who "put their clothes on backward," speak bad English and go to jail. To pop culture intellectual Dyson-author of books on Marvin Gaye, Tupac Shakur and Martin Luther King Jr.-this was the most blatant manifestation of an attitude shared by the "Afristocracy." With empathy and energy, Dyson takes Cosby at his word and dissects his arguments-as well as the comedian's own conduct-in order to combat Afristocratic dogma. While Dyson is merciless in assessing both, he takes the opportunity to explore a host of hot-button issues in black culture, from illegitimacy to faux African names, citing data and making his own case for black culture as adapted to a dominant white society that systematically puts up barriers to opportunity. The prolific Dyson has already generated controversy with what finally amounts to an evisceration of a major black figure, but that seems to be precisely the point. Despite the specificity and ferocity of Dyson's critique (which draws on allegations that Cosby sexually abused a woman and fathered an illegitimate child, and understates the race politics of The Cosby Show), Cosby ends up more of a straw man than take-down victim, as Dyson celebrates the "persistent freedom of black folk." 12-city author tour; 40-city radio satellite tour. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In a 1968 television special, a 1969 Playboy interview, and a 1976 doctoral dissertation, Bill Cosby laid the responsibility for the constricted life opportunities of low-income blacks on the shoulders of privileged white society. Flash to May 2004, when Cosby gave a well-publicized speech in which he tore into those he referred to as African American "knuckleheads," calling them irresponsible and uneducated and charging them with failing in their parental duties. A best-selling author (Holler If You Hear Me), Baptist minister, and ex-welfare teenage father, Dyson (humanities, Univ. of Pennsylvania) firmly castigates Cosby for ignoring gross inequities in educational opportunities, criminal justice treatment, living conditions, and respect. Cosby, argues Dyson, should use his station in life to help. Highly recommended for those interested in exploring relations among the different U.S. classes and what the disparity means to the country's overall future.-Suzanne W. Wood, emerita, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.