Liberalism undressed

During the past 40 years, many of liberalism's most distinguished defenders have presented complex, controversial, abstruse, and even impenetrable theories to justify liberal institutions and practices, often relying on metaphysical constructs, imaginary beings, and fanciful events to describe abstract liberal principles that rarely reach real-world problems. This book proposes that John Stuart Mill's harm principle - that the state may act only to prevent harm to others - can justify a government capable of dealing with pressing modern problems of human harm while restrained enough to provide people freedom to live life on their own terms

Cover -- Contents -- 1. The Liberal Premise -- 2. Constructing Harm from Natural Rights: The Cases of Locke and Nozick -- 3. The Meaning of Harm Derived from Interests: Joel Feinberg's Harm Principle -- 4. Collective Harms and the Market: Problems of Causation -- 5. Taxation, Welfare, and Benefits -- 6. The Duty to Act: Toward the Fiduciary Ethic -- 7. The Forms of Intervention -- 8. What Who? -- 9. Paternalism and the Timeline -- 10. Harm to Norms -- 11. Liberalism Redressed -- Appendix: Four Liberal Premises and Their Problems -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.