John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty” is an essential text in the Liberal tradition. In it, he defends the necessity of personal autonomy, and the value of individualism. One quote (which I stole from the internet, but which I believe to be in that work, although I cannot quickly find it) that I like is this:
“Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, courage, and mental vigor it has contained.”
One sees efforts by Leftists to paint conservatives as the enemies of originality. In my own town, we have a campaign to “Keep Louisville Weird”, by which they mean we should buy from locally owned, ideosyncratic businesses, rather than patronizing national chains which lack the eccentricity that local control and local relationships makes possible.
Flower children reveled in their “free spirited” rejection of conventional society, as do punk rockers, goths, and others today.
As what I consider to be a genuine Liberal, I find nothing distasteful in diversity. I like it. I like it when people do things differently, and express themselves in their own voices.
What I find distressing is what I perceive to the general LACK of originality of thought that characterizes most of these people. Their non-conformity is external only, and the actual content of their thought is distressingly uniform. They reject traditional moral forms, notions of patriotism, and generally Capitalism generally, conflating it–as they do–with Consumerism.
On this reading, Socialism is a romantic escape from the drudgery of pedestrian conformity. Yet, nothing can be more drearily conformist than a State which tolerates only one set of ideas, which is economically incompetent, and which punishes ideological deviations. Cuba is a nation which should be happy, but which lives in constant fear of running afoul of the secret police and army of informers that are everywhere.
In my piece on Sybaritic Leftism, I did admit that the Scandinavian nations offer an attractive set of ideas, but the problem with them is that in their pursuit of simple hedonism, they leave no room for the persistence of principled difference, and in practice one sees them giving in to whatever group screams the loudest.
The true eccentric is a man or woman of sturdy principles, who hews to them even in the face of adversity. If no one is opposing you, it can hardly be an act of courage to be different. Rather, that type of non-conformity is little better than stylistic narcissism.