There's a more fundamental power behind the urgency with which authoritarian conservatives seek to suppress individuality. That power is lack of trust.
This striking spirit of enlightenment has been expressed by the justification of human desires, individual emancipation, and of the challenge against the authoritarian doctrines.
Fowler was convincing and entertaining rather than authoritarian and angry, and a lifetime's lonely erudition (he was painfully shy) shows through on every page.
In searching for norms in the sense of authoritative standards of what ought to be, rather than in the sense of what is average and thus can be considered normal, normative ethics aims to dictate.
He is skeptical—he does not accept statements which are not based on the most complete evidence available—and therefore rejects authority as the sole basis for truth.