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Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom"^[1]) is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights.^[2][3] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutions, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, free trade, secular society, and the market economy. These ideas are often accepted even among political groups that do not openly profess a liberal ideological orientation. Liberalism encompasses several intellectual trends and traditions, but the dominant variants are classical liberalism, which became popular in the 18th century, and social liberalism, which became popular in the 20th century.

Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as hereditary status, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. Early liberal thinkers such as John Locke, who is often regarded as the founder of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace autocratic government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.

The American Revolution and the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the violent overthrow of autocratic rule, paving the way for the development of modern history. The 19th century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, Latin America, and North America. Liberal power increased even further in the 20th century, when liberal democracies triumphed in two world wars and survived major ideological challenges from fascism and communism. Today, liberals are organized politically on all major continents. They have played a decisive role in the growth of republics, the spread of civil rights and civil liberties, the establishment of the modern welfare state, the institution of religious toleration and religious freedom, and the development of globalization. They have also shown strong support for regional and international organizations, including the European Union and the United Nations, hoping to reduce conflict through diplomacy and multilateral negotiations. To highlight the importance of liberalism in modern life, political scientist Alan Wolfe claimed that "liberalism is the answer for which modernity is the question".^[4]

Contents 1 Etymology and definition 2 History 2.1 Inception to revolution 2.2 Children of revolution 2.3 Wars and renewal 3 Philosophy 3.1 Major themes 3.2 Dominant ideas and traditions 3.3 Relation to other ideologies 4 Worldwide 4.1 Europe 4.2 Americas 4.3 Asia and Oceania 4.4 Africa 5 Impact and influence 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

Etymology and definition

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Words such as liberal, liberty, and libertarian all trace their history to the Latin liber, which means "free".^[5] One of the first recorded instances of the word liberal occurs in 1375, when it was used to describe the liberal arts.^[6] The word's early connection with the classical education of a medieval university soon gave way to a proliferation of different denotations and connotations. Liberal could refer to "free in bestowing" as early as 1387, "made without stint" in 1433, "freely permitted" in 1530, and "free from restraint"—often as a pejorative remark—in the 16th and the 17th centuries.^[7] In 16th century England, liberal could have positive or negative attributes in referring to someone's generosity or indiscretion.^[8] In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare wrote of "a liberal villaine" who "hath...confest his vile encounters".^[9] With the rise of the Enlightenment, the word acquired decisively more positive undertones, being defined as "free from narrow prejudice" in 1781 and "free from bigotry" in 1823.^[10] In 1815, the first use of the word liberalism appeared in English.^[11] By the middle of the 19th century, liberal started being used as a fully politicized term for parties and movements all over the world.

The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary defines the word liberal as "giving freely, generous, not sparing; open-minded, not prejudiced ... for general broadening of the mind".^[12] It also defines the word as "regarding many traditional beliefs as dispensable, invalidated by modern thought, or liable to change".^[13] Identifying any definitive meaning for the word, however, has proven challenging to scholars and to the general public. The widespread use of the word liberal often inspires people to understand it based on a wide array of factors, including geographic location or political orientation.^[14] The American political scientist Louis Hartz echoed this frustration and confusion, writing that "Liberalism is an even vaguer term, clouded as it is by all sorts of modern social reform connotations, and even when one insists on using it in the Lockian sense...there are aspects of our original life in the Puritan colonies and the South which hardly fit its meaning".^[15] Hartz emphasized the European origin of the word, conceptualizing a liberal as someone who believes in liberty, equality, and capitalism—in opposition to the association that American conservatives have tried to establish between liberalism and centralized government.^[16]

History

The history of liberalism spans the better part of the last four centuries, beginning in the English Civil War and continuing after the end of the Cold War. Liberalism started as a major doctrine and intellectual endeavor in response to the religious wars gripping Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, although the historical context for the ascendancy of liberalism goes back to the Middle Ages. The first notable incarnation of liberal agitation came with the American Revolution, and liberalism fully exploded as a comprehensive movement against the old order during the French Revolution, which set the pace for the future development of human history. Classical liberals, who broadly emphasized the importance of free markets and civil liberties, dominated liberal history for a century after the French Revolution. The onset of the First World War and the Great Depression, however, accelerated the trends begun in late 19th century Britain towards a new liberalism that emphasized a greater role for the state in ameliorating devastating social conditions. By the beginning of the 21st century, liberal democracies and their fundamental characteristics—support for constitutions, civil rights and individual liberties, pluralistic society, and the welfare state—had prevailed in most regions around the world.

Inception to revolution

European experiences during the Middle Ages were often characterized by fear, uncertainty, and warfare—the latter being especially endemic in medieval life.^[17] A symbiotic relationship emerged between the Catholic Church and regional rulers: the Church gave kings and queens authority to rule while the latter spread the message of the Christian faith and did the bidding of Christian social and military forces.^[18] The influence of the Church can be seen by the fact that the very term often referred to European society as a whole.^[19] In the 14th century, however, disputes over papal successions and the enormous casualty rates of the Black Death incensed people across the continent because they believed that the Church was ineffective.^[20][21] The emergence of the Renaissance in the 15th century also helped to weaken unquestioning submission to the Church by reinvigorating interest in science and in the classical world.^[22] In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation developed from sentiments that viewed the Church as an oppressive ruling order too involved in the feudal and baronial structure of European society.^[23] The Church launched a Counter Reformation to contain these bubbling sentiments, but the effort unraveled in the Thirty Years War of the 17th century. In England, a massive civil war led to the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Parliament ultimately succeeded—with the Glorious Revolution of 1688—in establishing a limited and constitutional monarchy. The main facets of early liberal ideology emerged from these events, and historians Colton and Palmer characterize the period in the following light:

“

The unique thing about England was that Parliament, in defeating the king, arrived at a workable form of government. Government remained strong but came under parliamentary control. This determined the character of modern England and launched into the history of Europe and of the world the great movement of liberalism.[24]

”

The early hero of that movement was the English philosopher John Locke. Locke debated recent political controversies with some of the most famous intellectuals of the day, but his greatest rival was Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes and Locke looked at the political world and disagreed on several substantial issues, although their arguments inspired later social contract theories outlining the relationship between people and their governments.^[25] Locke developed a radical political notion, arguing that government acquires consent from the governed. His celebrated Two Treatises (1690), the foundational text of liberal ideology, outlined his major ideas. Once humans moved out of their natural state and formed societies, Locke argued as follows: "Thus that which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world".^[26] The stringent insistence that lawful government did not have a supernatural basis was a sharp break with most previous traditions of governance.^[27] The intellectual journey of liberalism continued beyond Locke with the Enlightenment, a period of profound intellectual vitality that questioned old traditions and influenced several monarchies throughout the 18th century.

The ideas circulating in the Enlightenment had a powerful impact in North America and in France. The American colonies had been loyal British subjects for decades, but they declared independence in 1776 after harsh British taxation policies. Military engagements in the American Revolution began in 1775 and were largely complete by 1781. After the war, the colonies held a Constitutional Convention in 1787 to resolve the problems stemming from the Articles of Confederation. The resulting Constitution of the United States settled on a republic. The American Revolution was an important struggle in liberal history, and it was quickly followed by the most important: the French Revolution.

Three years into the French Revolution, German writer Johann von Goethe reportedly told the defeated Prussian soldiers after the Battle of Valmy that "from this place and from this time forth commences a new era in world history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth".^[28] Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, and the end of the early modern period is attributed to the onset of the Revolution in 1789.^[29] The Revolution is often seen as marking the "dawn of the modern era,"^[30] and its convulsions are widely associated with "the triumph of liberalism".^[31] For liberals, the Revolution was their defining moment, and later liberals approved of the French Revolution almost entirely—"not only its results but the act itself," as two historians noted.^[32] The French Revolution began in May 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-General. The first year of the Revolution witnessed, among other major events, the Storming of the Bastille in July and the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August. The next few years were dominated by tensions between various liberal assemblies and a conservative monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A republic was proclaimed in September 1792. External conflict and internal squabbling significantly radicalized the Revolution, culminating in the brutal Reign of Terror. After the fall of Robespierre and the Jacobins, the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799, when it was replaced by the Consulate under Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon ruled as First Consul for about five years, centralizing power and streamlining the bureaucracy along the way. The Napoleonic Wars, pitting the heirs of a revolutionary state against the old monarchies of Europe, started in 1805 and lasted for a decade. Along with their boots and Charleville muskets, French soldiers brought to the rest of the European continent the liquidation of the feudal system, the liberalization of property laws, the end of seigneurial dues, the abolition of guilds, the legalization of divorce, the disintegration of Jewish ghettos, the collapse of the Inquisition, the permanent destruction of the Holy Roman Empire, the elimination of church courts and religious authority, the establishment of the metric system, and equality under the law for all men.^[33] Napoleon wrote that "the peoples of Germany, as of France, Italy and Spain, want equality and liberal ideas,"^[34] with some historians suggesting that he may have been the first person ever to use the word liberal in a political sense.^[35] He also governed through a method that one historian described as "civilian dictatorship," which "drew its legitimacy from direct consultation with the people, in the form of a plebiscite".^[36] Napoleon did not always live up the liberal ideals he espoused, however. His most lasting achievement, the Civil Code, served as "an object of emulation all over the globe,"^[37] but it also perpetuated further discrimination against women under the banner of the "natural order".^[38] The First Empire eventually collapsed in 1815, but this period of chaos and revolution introduced the world to a new movement and ideology that would soon crisscross the globe.

Children of revolution

Liberals in the 19th century wanted to develop a world free from government intervention, or at least free from too much government intervention. They championed the ideal of negative liberty, which constitutes the absence of coercion and the absence of external constraints.^[39] They believed governments were cumbersome burdens and they wanted governments to stay out of the lives of individuals.^[40] Liberals simultaneously pushed for the expansion of civil rights and for the expansion of free markets and free trade. The latter kind of economic thinking had been formalized by Adam Smith in his monumental Wealth of Nations (1776), which revolutionized the field of economics and established the "invisible hand" of the free market as a self-regulating mechanism that did not depend on external interference.^[41] Sheltered by liberalism, the laissez-faire economic world of the 19th century emerged with full tenacity, particularly in the United States and in the United Kingdom.^[42]

Politically, liberals saw the 19th century as a gateway to achieving the promises of 1789. In Spain, the Liberales, the first group to use the liberal label in a political context,^[43] fought for the implementation of the 1812 Constitution for decades—overthrowing the monarchy in 1820 as part of the Trienio Liberal and defeating the conservative Carlists in the 1830s. In France, the July Revolution of 1830, orchestrated by liberal politicians and journalists, removed the Bourbon monarchy and inspired similar uprisings elsewhere in Europe. Frustration with the pace of political progress, however, sparked even more gigantic revolutions in 1848. Revolutions spread throughout the Austrian Empire, the German states, and the Italian states. Governments fell rapidly. Liberal nationalists demanded written constitutions, representative assemblies, greater suffrage rights, and freedom of the press.^[44] A second republic was proclaimed in France. Serfdom was abolished in Prussia, Galicia, Bohemia, and Hungary.^[45] Metternich shocked Europe when he resigned and fled to Britain in panic and disguise.^[46]

Eventually, however, the success of the revolutionaries petered out. Without French help, the Italians were easily defeated by the Austrians. Austria also managed to contain the bubbling nationalist sentiments in Germany and Hungary, helped along by the failure of the Frankfurt Assembly to unify the German states into a single nation. Under abler leadership, however, the Italians and the Germans wound up realizing their dreams for independence. The Sardinian Prime Minister, Camillo di Cavour, was a shrewd liberal who understood that the only effective way for the Italians to gain independence was if the French were on their side.^[47] Napoleon III agreed to Cavour's request for assistance and France defeated Austria in the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, setting the stage for Italian independence. German unification transpired under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck, who decimated the enemies of Prussia in war after war, finally triumphing against France in 1871 and proclaiming the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, ending another saga in the drive for nationalization. The French proclaimed a third republic after their loss in the war, and the rest of French history transpired under republican eyes.

Just a few decades after the French Revolution, liberalism went global. The liberal and conservative struggles in Spain also replicated themselves in Latin American countries like Mexico and Ecuador. From 1857 to 1861, Mexico was gripped in the bloody War of Reform, a massive internal and ideological confrontation between the liberals and the conservatives.^[48] The liberal triumph there parallels with the situation in Ecuador. Similar to other nations throughout the region at the time, Ecuador was steeped in turmoil, with the people divided between rival liberal and conservative camps. From these conflicts, García Moreno established a conservative government was eventually overthrown in the Liberal Revolution of 1895. The Radical Liberals who toppled the conservatives were led by Eloy Alfaro, a firebrand who implemented a variety of sociopolitical reforms, including the separation of church and state, the legalization of divorce, and the establishment of public schools.^[49]

Although liberals were active throughout the world in the 19th century, it was in Britain that the future character of liberalism would take shape. The liberal sentiments unleashed after the revolutionary era of the previous century ultimately coalesced into the Liberal Party, formed in 1859 from various Radical and Whig elements. The Liberals produced one of the greatest British prime ministers—William Gladstone, who was also known as the Grand Old Man.^[50] Under Gladstone, the Liberals reformed education, disestablished the Church of Ireland, and introduced the secret ballot for local and parliamentary elections. Following Gladstone, and after a period of Conservative domination, the Liberals returned with full strength in the general election of 1906, aided by working class voters worried about food prices. After that historic victory, the Liberal Party shifted from its classical liberalism and laid the groundwork for the future British welfare state, establishing various forms of health insurance, unemployment insurance, and pensions for elderly workers.^[51] This new kind of liberalism would sweep over much of the world in the 20th century.

Wars and renewal

The 20th century started perilously for liberalism. The First World War proved a major challenge for liberal democracies, although they ultimately defeated the dictatorial states of the Central Powers. The war precipitated the collapse of older forms of government, including empires and dynastic states. The number of republics in Europe reached 13 by the end of the war, as compared with only three at the start of the war in 1914.^[52] This phenomenon became readily apparent in Russia. Before the war, the Russian monarchy was reeling from losses to Japan and political struggles with the Kadets, a powerful liberal bloc in the Duma. Facing huge shortages in basic necessities along with widespread riots in early 1917, Czar Nicholas II abdicated in March, ending three centuries of Romanov rule and allowing liberals to declare a republic. Under the uncertain leadership of Alexander Kerensky, however, the Provisional Government mismanaged Russia's continuing involvement in the war, prompting angry reactions from the Petrograd workers, who drifted further and further to the left. The Bolsheviks, a communist group led by Vladimir Lenin, seized the political opportunity from this confusion and launched a second revolution in Russia during the same year. The communist victory presented a major challenge for liberalism because it precipitated a rise in totalitarian regimes, but the economic problems that rocked the Western world in the 1930s proved even more devastating.

The Great Depression fundamentally changed the liberal world. There was an inkling of a new liberalism during the First World War, but modern liberalism fully hatched in the 1930s as a response to the Depression, which inspired John Maynard Keynes to revolutionize the field of economics. Classical liberals, such as economist Ludwig von Mises, posited that completely free markets were the optimal economic units capable of effectively allocating resources—that over time, in other words, they would produce full employment and economic security.^[53] Keynes spearheaded a broad assault on classical economics and its followers, arguing that totally free markets were not ideal, and that hard economic times required intervention and investment from the state. Where the market failed to properly allocate resources, for example, the government was required to stimulate the economy until private funds could start flowing again—a "prime the pump" kind of strategy designed to boost industrial production.^[54]

The social liberal program launched by President Roosevelt in the United States, the New Deal, proved very popular with the American public. In 1933, when FDR came into office, the unemployment rate stood at roughly 25 percent.^[55] The size of the economy, measured by the gross national product, had fallen to half the value it had in early 1929.^[56] The electoral victories of FDR and the Democrats precipitated a deluge of deficit spending and public works programs. In 1940, the level of unemployment had fallen by 10 points to around 15 percent.^[57] Additional state spending and the gigantic public works program sparked by the Second World War eventually pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. From 1940 to 1941, government spending increased by 59 percent, the gross domestic product skyrocketed 17 percent, and unemployment fell below 10 percent for the first time since 1929.^[58] By 1945, after vast government spending, public debt stood at a staggering 120 percent of GNP, but unemployment had been effectively eliminated.^[59] Most nations that emerged from the Great Depression did so with deficit spending and strong intervention from the state.

The economic woes of the period prompted widespread unrest in the European political world, leading to the rise of fascism as an ideology and a movement that heavily criticized liberalism.^[60] Broadly speaking, fascist ideology emphasized elite rule and absolute leadership, a rejection of equality, the imposition of patriarchal society, a stern commitment to war as an instrument of natural behavior, and the elimination of supposedly inferior or subhuman groups from the structure of the nation.^[61] The fascist and nationalist grievances of the 1930s eventually culminated in the Second World War, the deadliest conflict in human history. The Allies prevailed in the war by 1945, and their victory set the stage for the Cold War between communist states and liberal democracies. The Cold War featured extensive ideological competition and several proxy wars. While communist states and liberal democracies competed against one another, an economic crisis in the 1970s inspired a temporary move away from Keynesian economics across many Western governments. This classical liberal renewal, known as neoliberalism, lasted through the 1980s and the 1990s, bringing about economic privatization of previously state-owned industries. However, recent economic troubles have prompted a resurgence in Keynesian economic thought. Meanwhile, nearing the end of the 20th century, communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed precipitously, leaving liberal democracies as the only major forms of government. At the beginning of the Second World War, the number of democracies around the world was about the same as it had been forty years before.^[62] After 1945, liberal democracies spread very quickly. Even as late as 1974, roughly 75 percent of all nations were considered dictatorial, but now more than half of all countries are democracies.^[63] This last achievement spoke volumes about the influence of liberalism to the American intellectual Francis Fukuyama, who speculated on the "end of history" by claiming:

“

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such; that is, the end point of...ideological evolution and the universalization of...liberal democracy as the final form of human government.[64]

”

Philosophy

Liberalism—both as a political current and an intellectual tradition—is mostly a modern phenomenon that started in the 17th century, although some liberal philosophical ideas had precursors in classical antiquity.^[65] The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius praised "the idea of a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed".^[66] Scholars have also recognized a number of principles familiar to contemporary liberals in the works of several Sophists and in the Funeral Oration by Pericles.^[67] Liberal philosophy symbolizes an extensive intellectual tradition that has examined and popularized some of the most important and controversial principles of the modern world. Its immense scholarly and academic output has been characterized as containing "richness and diversity," but that diversity often has meant that liberalism comes in different formulations and presents a challenge to anyone looking for a clear definition.^[68]

Major themes

Though all liberal doctrines possess a common heritage, scholars frequently assume that those doctrines contain "separate and often contradictory streams of thought".^[69] The objectives of liberal theorists and philosophers have differed across various times, cultures, and continents. The diversity of liberalism can be gleaned from the numerous adjectives that liberal thinkers and movements have attached to the very term liberalism, including classical, egalitarian, economic, social, welfare-state, ethical, humanist, deontological, perfectionist, democratic, and institutional, to name a few.^[70] Despite these variations, liberal thought does exhibit a few definite and fundamental conceptions. At its very root, liberalism is a philosophy about the meaning of humanity and society. Political philosopher John Gray identified the common strands in liberal thought as being individualist, egalitarian, meliorist, and universalist. The individualist element avers the ethical primacy of the human being against the pressures of social collectivism, the egalitarian element assigns the same moral worth and status to all individuals, the meliorist element asserts that successive generations can improve their sociopolitical arrangements, and the universalist element affirms the moral unity of the human species and marginalizes local cultural differences.^[71] The meliorist element has been the subject of much controversy, defended by thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, who believed in human progress, while suffering from attacks by thinkers such as Rousseau, who believed that human attempts to improve themselves through social cooperation would fail.^[72] Describing the liberal temperament, Gray claimed that it "has been inspired by skepticism and by a fideistic certainty of divine revelation ... it has exalted the power of reason even as, in other contexts, it has sought to humble reason's claims". The liberal philosophical tradition has searched for validation and justification through several intellectual projects. The moral and political suppositions of liberalism have been based on traditions such as natural rights and utilitarian theory, although sometimes liberals even requested support from scientific and religious circles.^[73] Through all these strands and traditions, scholars have identified the following major common facets of liberal thought: believing in equality and individual liberty, supporting private property and individual rights, supporting the idea of limited constitutional government, and recognizing the importance of related values such as pluralism, toleration, autonomy, and consent.^[74]

Dominant ideas and traditions

Early liberals, including John Locke and Baruch Spinoza, attempted to determine the purpose of government in a liberal society. To these liberals, securing the most essential amenities of life—liberty and private property among them—required the formation of a "sovereign" authority with universal jurisdiction.^[75] In a natural state of affairs, liberals argued, humans were driven by the instincts of survival and self-preservation, and the only way to escape from such a dangerous existence was to form a common and supreme power capable of arbitrating between competing human desires.^[76] This power could be formed in the framework of a civil society that allows individuals to make a voluntary social contract with the sovereign authority, transferring their natural rights to that authority in return for the protection of life, liberty, and property.^[77] These early liberals often disagreed in their opinion of the most appropriate form of government, but they all shared the belief that liberty was natural and that its restriction needed strong justification.^[78] Liberals generally believed in limited government, although several liberal philosophers decried government outright, with Thomas Paine writing that "government even in its best state is a necessary evil".^[79] As part of the project to limit the powers of government, various liberal theorists—such as James Madison and the Baron de Montesquieu—conceived the notion of separation of powers, a system designed to equally distribute governmental authority among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.^[80] Finally, governments had to realize, liberals maintained, that poor and improper governance gave the people authority to overthrow the ruling order through any and all possible means—even through outright violence and revolution, if needed.^[81] Contemporary liberals, heavily influenced by social liberalism, have continued to support limited constitutional government while also advocating for state services and provisions to ensure equal rights. Modern liberals claim that formal or official guarantees of individual rights are irrelevant when individuals lack the material means to benefit from those rights, urging a greater role for government in the administration of economic affairs.^[82]

Beyond identifying a clear role for government in modern society, liberals also have obsessed over the meaning and nature of the most important principle in liberal philosophy: liberty. From the 17th century until the 19th century, liberals—from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill—conceptualized liberty as the absence of interference from government and from other individuals, claiming that all people should have the freedom to develop their own unique abilities and capacities without being sabotaged by others.^[83] Mill's On Liberty (1859), one of the classic texts in liberal philosophy, proclaimed that "the only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way".^[84] Support for laissez-faire capitalism is often associated with this principle, with Friedrich Hayek arguing in the The Road to Serfdom (1944) that reliance on free markets would preclude totalitarian control by the state.^[85] Beginning in the late 19th century, however, a new conception of liberty entered the liberal intellectual arena. This new kind of liberty became known as positive liberty to distinguish it from the prior negative version, and it was first developed by British philosopher Thomas Hill Green. Green rejected the idea that humans were driven solely by self-interest, emphasizing instead the complex circumstances that are involved in the evolution of our moral character.^[86] In a very profound step for the future of modern liberalism, he also tasked social and political institutions with the enhancement of individual freedom and identity.^[87] Foreshadowing the new liberty as the freedom to act rather than to avoid suffering from the acts of others, Green wrote the following:

“

If it were ever reasonable to wish that the usage of words had been other than it has been...one might be inclined to wish that the term 'freedom' had been confined to the...power to do what one wills.[88]

”

Rather than previous liberal conceptions viewing society as populated by selfish individuals, Green viewed society as an organic whole in which all individuals have a duty to promote the common good.^[89] His ideas spread rapidly and were developed by other thinkers such as L. T. Hobhouse and John Hobson. In a few short years, this New Liberalism had become the essential social and political program of the Liberal Party in Britain,^[90] and it would encircle much of the world in the 20th century. In addition to examining negative and positive liberty, liberals have tried to understand the proper relationship between liberty and democracy. As they struggled to expand suffrage rights, liberals increasingly understood that people left out of the democratic decision-making process were liable to the tyranny of the majority, a concept explained in Mill's On Liberty and in Democracy in America (1835) by Alexis de Tocqueville.^[91] As a response, liberals began demanding proper safeguards to thwart majorities in their attempts at suppressing the rights of minorities.^[92]

Besides liberty, liberals have developed several other principles important to the construction of their philosophical structure, such as equality, pluralism, and toleration. Highlighting the confusion over the first principle, Voltaire commented that "equality is at once the most natural and at times the most chimeral of things".^[93] All forms of liberalism assume, in some basic sense, that individuals are equal.^[94] In maintaining that people are naturally equal, liberals assume that they all possess the same right to liberty.^[95] In other words, no one is inherently entitled to enjoy the benefits of liberal society more than anyone else, and all people are equal subjects before the law.^[96] Beyond this basic conception, liberal theorists diverge on their understanding of equality. American philosopher John Rawls emphasized the need to ensure not only equality under the law, but also the equal distribution of material resources that individuals required to develop their aspirations in life.^[97] Libertarian thinker Robert Nozick disagreed with Rawls, championing the former version of Lockean equality instead.^[98] To contribute to the development of liberty, liberals also have promoted concepts like pluralism and toleration. By pluralism, liberals refer to the proliferation of opinions and beliefs that characterize a stable social order.^[99] Unlike many of their competitors and predecessors, liberals do not seek conformity and homogeneity in the way that people think; in fact, their efforts have been geared towards establishing a governing framework that harmonizes and minimizes conflicting views, but still allows those views to exist and flourish.^[100] For liberal philosophy, pluralism leads easily to toleration. Since individuals will hold diverging viewpoints, liberals argue, they ought to uphold and respect the right of one another to disagree.^[101] From the liberal perspective, toleration was initially connected to religious toleration, with Spinoza condemning "the stupidity of religious persecution and ideological wars".^[102] Toleration also played a central role in the ideas of Kant and John Stuart Mill. Both thinkers believed that society will contain different conceptions of a good ethical life and that people should be allowed to make their own choices without interference from the state or other individuals.^[103]

Relation to other ideologies

As one of the first modern ideologies, liberalism has had a profound impact on the ones that followed it. In particular, some scholars suggest that liberalism gave rise to feminism, although others maintain that liberal democracy is inadequate for the realization of feminist objectives.^[104] Liberal feminism, the dominant tradition in feminist history, hopes to eradicate all barriers to gender equality—claiming that the continued existence of such barriers eviscerates the individual rights and freedoms ostensibly guaranteed by a liberal social order.^[105] British philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft is widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism, with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) expanding the boundaries of liberalism to include women in the political structure of liberal society.^[106] Less friendly to the goals of liberalism has been conservatism. Like liberalism, conservatism is complex and amorphous, laying claims to several intellectual traditions over the last three centuries.^[107] Edmund Burke, considered by some to be the first major proponent of modern conservative thought, offered a blistering critique of the French Revolution by assailing the liberal pretensions to the power of rationality and to the natural equality of all humans.^[108] However, a few variations of conservatism, like conservative liberalism, expound some of the same ideas and principles championed by classical liberalism, including "small government and thriving capitalism".^[109] Even more uncertain is the relationship between liberalism and socialism. Socialism began as a concrete ideology in the 19th century with the writings of Karl Marx, and it too—as with liberalism and conservatism—fractured into several major movements in the decades after its founding.^[110] The most prominent eventually became social democracy, which can be broadly defined as a project that aims to correct what it regards as the intrinsic defects of capitalism by reducing the inequalities that exist within an economic system.^[111] Several commentators have noted strong similarities between social liberalism and social democracy, with one political scientist even calling American liberalism "bootleg social democracy".^[112] Another movement associated with modern democracy, Christian democracy, hopes to spread Catholic social ideas and has gained a large following in some European nations.^[113] The early roots of Christian democracy developed as a reaction against the industrialization and urbanization associated with laissez-faire liberalism in the 19th century.^[114] Despite these complex relationships, some scholars have argued that liberalism actually "rejects ideological thinking" altogether, largely because such thinking could lead to unrealistic expectations for human society.^[115]

Worldwide

Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern times.^[117][118] Politically, liberals have organized extensively throughout the world. Liberal parties, think tanks, and other institutions are common in many nations, although they advocate for different causes based on their ideological orientation. Liberal parties can be center-left, centrist, or center-right depending on their location. They can further be divided based on their adherence to social liberalism or classical liberalism, although all liberal parties and individuals share basic similarities, including the support for civil rights and democratic institutions. On a global level, liberals are united in the Liberal International, which contains over 100 influential liberal parties and organizations from across the ideological spectrum. Some parties in the LI are among the most famous in the world, such as the Liberal Party of Canada, while others are among the smallest, such as the Liberal Party of Gibraltar. Regionally, liberals are organized through various institutions depending on the prevailing geopolitical context. In the European Parliament, for example, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe is the predominant group that represents the interest of European liberals.

Europe

In Europe, liberalism has a long tradition dating back to 17th century. Scholars often split those traditions into English and French versions, with the former version of liberalism emphasizing the expansion of democratic values and constitutional reform and the latter rejecting authoritarian political and economic structures, as well as being involved with nation-building.^[119] The continental French version was deeply divided between moderates and progressives, with the moderates tending to elitism and the progressives supporting the universalization of fundamental institutions, such as universal suffrage, universal education, and the expansion of property rights.^[120] Over time, the moderates displaced the progressives as the main guardians of continental European liberalism. Moderates were identified with liberalism or liberal conservatism whereas progressives could fall under a number of left-wing camps, from liberalism and radicalism to republicanism and social democracy.^[121] A prominent example of these divisions is the German Free Democratic Party, which was historically divided between national liberal and social liberal factions.^[122]

Modern European liberal parties exhibit diverse tendencies. Before the First World War, liberal parties dominated the European political scene, but they were gradually displaced by socialists and social democrats in the early 20th century. The fortunes of liberal parties since World War II have been mixed, with some gaining strength while others suffered from continuous declines.^[123] The fall of the Soviet Union and the breakup of Yugoslavia at the end of the 20th century, however, allowed the formation of many liberal parties throughout Eastern Europe. These parties developed varying ideological characters. Some, such as the Slovenian Liberal Democrats or the Lithuanian Social Liberals, have been characterized as center-left.^[124][125] Others, such as the Romanian National Liberal Party, have been classified as center-right.^[126] Meanwhile, some liberal parties in Western Europe have undergone renewal and transformation, coming back to the political limelight after historic disappointments. Perhaps the most famous instance is the Liberal Democrats in Britain. The Liberal Democrats are the heirs of the once-mighty Liberal Party, which suffered a huge erosion of support to the Labour Party in the early 20th century. After nearly vanishing from the British political scene altogether, the Liberals eventually united with the Social Democratic Party, a Labour splinter group, in 1988—forming the current Liberal Democrats along the way. The Liberal Democrats have earned significant popular support in the general election of 2005 and in local council elections, marking the first time in decades that a British party with a liberal ideology has achieved such electoral success. Both in Britain and elsewhere in Western Europe, liberal parties have often cooperated with socialist and social democratic parties, as evidenced by the Purple Coalition in the Netherlands during the late 1990s and into the 21st century. The Purple Coalition, one of the most consequential in Dutch history, brought together the progressive left-liberal D66,^[127] the market liberal and center-right VVD,^[128] and the socialist Labour Party—an unusual combination that ultimately legalized same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and prostitution while also instituting a non-enforcement policy on marijuana.

Americas

In North America, unlike in Europe, the word liberalism almost exclusively refers to social liberalism in contemporary politics. The dominant Canadian and American parties, the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party, are frequently identified as being modern liberal or center-left organizations in the academic literature.^{[129][130][131]} In Canada, the long-dominant Liberal Party, affectionately known as the Grits, ruled the country for nearly 70 years during the 20th century. The party produced some of the most famous prime ministers in Canadian history, including Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, and has been primarily responsible for the development of the Canadian welfare state. The enormous success of the Liberals—virtually unmatched in any other liberal democracy—has prompted many political commentators over time to identify them as the nation's natural governing party.^[132][133]

In the United States, modern liberalism traces its history to the popular presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who initiated the New Deal in response to the Great Depression and won an unprecedented four elections. The New Deal coalition established by FDR left a decisive legacy and impacted many future American presidents, including John F. Kennedy, a self-described liberal who defined a liberal as "someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions...someone who cares about the welfare of the people".^[134] In the late 20th century, a conservative backlash against the kind of liberalism championed by FDR and JFK developed in the Republican Party.^[135] This brand of conservatism primarily reacted against the civil unrest and the cultural changes that transpired during the 1960s.^[136] It launched into power presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Economic woes in the early 21st century, however, led to a resurgence of social liberalism with the election of Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.^[137]

In Latin America, liberal agitation dates back to the 19th century, when liberal groups frequently fought against and violently overthrew conservative regimes in several countries across the region. Liberal revolutions in countries such as Mexico and Ecuador ushered in the modern world for much of Latin America. Latin American liberals generally emphasized free trade, private property, and anti-clericalism.^[138] Today, market liberals in Latin America are organized in the Red Liberal de América Latina, a network that brings together dozens of liberal parties and organizations. RELIAL features parties as geographically diverse as the Mexican Nueva Alianza and the Cuban Liberal Union, which aims to secure power in Cuba. Some major liberal parties in the region continue, however, to align themselves with social liberal ideas and policies—a notable case being the Colombian Liberal Party, which is a member of the Socialist International. Another famous example is the Paraguayan Authentic Radical Liberal Party, one of the most powerful parties in the country, which has also been classified as center-left.^[139]

Asia and Oceania

In Asia, liberalism is a much younger political current than in Europe or the Americas. Continentally, liberals are organized through the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, which includes powerful parties such the Liberal Party in the Philippines, the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan, and the Democrat Party in Thailand. Two notable examples of liberal influence can be found in India and Australia, although several Asian nations have rejected important liberal principles.

In Australia, liberalism is primarily championed by the center-right Liberal Party.^[140] The Liberals in Australia support free markets as well as social conservatism.^[141][142] In India, the most populous democracy in the world, the Indian National Congress has long dominated political affairs. The INC was founded in the late 19th century by liberal nationalists demanding the creation of a more liberal and autonomous India.^[143] Liberalism continued to be the main ideological current of the group through the early years of the 20th century, but socialism gradually overshadowed the thinking of the party in the next few decades. A famous struggle led by the INC eventually earned India's independence from Britain. In recent times, the party has adopted more of a liberal streak, championing open markets while simultaneously seeking social justice. In its 2009 Manifesto, the INC praised a "secular and liberal" Indian nationalism against the nativist, communal, and conservative ideological tendencies it claims are espoused by the right.^[144] In general, the major theme of Asian liberalism in the past few decades has been the rise of democratization as a method facilitate the rapid economic modernization of the continent.^[145] Several Asian nations, however, notably China, are challenging Western liberalism with a combination of authoritarian government and capitalism,^[146] while in others, notably Myanmar, liberal democracy has been replaced by military dictatorship.^[147]

Africa

Liberalism in Africa is comparatively weak. In recent times, however, liberal parties and institutions have made a major push for political power. On a continental level, liberals are organized in the Africa Liberal Network, which contains influential parties such as the Popular Movement in Morocco, the Democratic Party in Senegal, and the Rally of the Republicans in Côte d'Ivoire. Among African nations, South Africa stands out for having a notable liberal tradition that other countries on the continent lack. In the middle of the 20th century, the Liberal Party and the Progressive Party were formed to oppose the apartheid policies of the government. The Liberals formed a multiracial party that originally drew considerable support from urban Africans and college-educated whites.^[148] It also gained supporters from the "westernized sectors of the peasantry", and its public meetings were heavily attended by black Africans.^[149] The party had 7,000 members at its height, although its appeal to the white population as a whole was too small to make any meaningful political changes.^[150] The Liberals were disbanded in 1968 after the government passed a law that prohibited parties from having multiracial membership. Today, liberalism in South Africa is represented by the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition party to the ruling African National Congress. The Democratic Alliance is the second largest party in the National Assembly and currently leads the provincial government of Western Cape.

Impact and influence

The fundamental elements of contemporary society have liberal roots. The early waves of liberalism expanded constitutional and parliamentary government, popularized economic individualism, and established a clear distinction between religious and political authority.^[151] One of the greatest liberal triumphs involved replacing the capricious nature of royalist and absolutist rule with a decision-making process encoded in written law.^[152] Liberals sought and established a constitutional order that prized important individual freedoms, such as the freedom of speech and of association, an independent judiciary and public trial by jury, and the abolition of aristocratic privileges.^[153] These sweeping changes in political authority marked the modern transition from absolutism to constitutional rule.^[154] The expansion and promotion of free markets was another major liberal achievement. Before they could establish markets, however, liberals had to destroy the old economic structures of the world. In that vein, liberals ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies, and various other restraints on economic activities.^[155] They also sought to abolish internal barriers to trade—eliminating guilds, local tariffs, and prohibitions on the sale of land along the way.^[156] Beyond free markets and constitutional government, early liberals also laid the groundwork for the separation of church and state. As heirs of the Enlightenment, liberals believed that any given social and political order emanated from human interactions, not from divine will.^[157] Many liberals were openly hostile to religious belief itself, but most concentrated their opposition to the union of religious and political authority—arguing that faith could prosper on its own, without official sponsorship or administration from the state.^[158]

Later waves of liberal thought and struggle were strongly influenced by the need to expand civil rights. In the 1960s and 1970s, the cause of Second Wave feminism in the United States was advanced in large part by liberal feminist organizations such as National Organization for Women.^[159] In addition to supporting gender equality, liberals also have advocated for racial equality in their drive to promote civil rights, and a global civil rights movement in the 20th century achieved several objectives towards both goals. Among the various regional and national movements, the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960s strongly highlighted the liberal crusade for equal rights. Describing the political efforts of the period, some historians have asserted that "the voting rights campaign marked...the convergence of two political forces at their zenith: the black campaign for equality and the movement for liberal reform," further remarking about how "the struggle to assure blacks the ballot coincided with the liberal call for expanded federal action to protect the rights of all citizens".^[160] The Great Society project launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson oversaw the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the establishment of Head Start and the Job Corps as part of the War on Poverty, and the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964—an altogether rapid series of events that some historians have dubbed the Liberal Hour.^[161]

Another major accomplishment of liberal agitation includes the rise of liberal internationalism, which has been credited with the establishment of global organizations such as the League of Nations and, after the Second World War, the United Nations.^[162] The idea of exporting liberalism worldwide and constructing a harmonious and liberal internationalist order has dominated the thinking of liberals since the 18th century.^[163] "Wherever liberalism has flourished domestically, it has been accompanied by visions of liberal internationalism," one historian wrote.^[164] But resistance to liberal internationalism was deep and bitter, with critics arguing that growing global interdependency would result in the loss of national sovereignty and that democracies represented a corrupt order incapable of either domestic or global governance.^[165] Other scholars have praised the influence of liberal internationalism, claiming that the rise of globalization "constitutes a triumph of the liberal vision that first appeared in the eighteenth century" while also writing that liberalism is "the only comprehensive and hopeful vision of world affairs".^[166] The gains of liberalism have been significant. In 1975, roughly 40 countries around the world were characterized as liberal democracies, but that number had increased to more than 80 as of as of 2008.^[167] Most of the world's richest and most powerful nations are liberal democracies with extensive social welfare programs.^[168]

Notes

References

External links

• Liberal International is the premier international political federation of liberal parties and institutions.
• Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe is the major liberal political group in the European Parliament.
• Africa Liberal Network is the main organization for liberal parties on the African continent.
• Liberal Party of Canada is one of the largest and the most dominant liberal parties in the world.
• Liberal Party of Gibraltar is one of the smallest liberal parties in the world.
• The Liberal is a British magazine dedicated to coverage of liberal politics and liberal culture.
• Ludwig von Mises Institute is a think tank devoted to the promotion of libertarian and classical liberal socioeconomic policies.
• Friedrich Naumann Foundation is a global advocacy organization that supports liberal ideas and policies.
• Americans for Democratic Action is an American advocacy organization that champions modern liberalism.
• The American Prospect is an American political magazine that backs social liberal policies.
• "Liberalism" article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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From Wikiquote

Contents 1 Anarchism 2 Anti-nationalism 3 Art 4 Bipartisanship, patriotism, and unity 5 Business and economy 6 Corruption 7 Democracy 8 Dictatorships, totalitarianism, and tyranny 9 Equality, freedom, liberty, and rights 10 Government bureaucracy 11 Liberalism 12 Men and women 13 Politics, laws of politics 14 Political jokes 15 Politicians and lawyers 16 Power and money 17 Presidency 18 Public opinion and polls 19 Public safety, domestic security, and gun control 20 Public service 21 The "Masses" 22 Reform 22.1 Campaign finance reform 23 Religion, separation of church and state 24 Voting and participation 25 War, military, and peace 26 See also

Anarchism

Main article: Anarchism

• La propriété, c'est le vol!
• Translated: Property is theft!
  • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution". Alternately translated as "Property is robbery!"

Anti-nationalism

• I consider myself a citizen of the world! ~ Charlie Chaplin (refers to Socrates ^[?])

• As a woman I have no country. As a woman, I want no country.
  • Virginia Woolf (1966) [1938]. Three Guineas. New York: Harcourt, Brace. p. 80. ISBN 0-156-90177-3.  

• Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands.
  • William Lloyd Garrison, "Declaration of Sentiments, Adopted by the Peace Convention, Held in Boston, September 18, 19 and 20, 1838", in Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison (Boston: R. F. Wallcut, 1852), p. 72 (Google Books e-text), originally published in The Liberator (September 28, 1838), p. 154

Art

• If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.
  • Commonly attributed to Emma Goldman, apparently this is a paraphrase of ideas she expressed in Living My Life, (1931), p. 56

Bipartisanship, patriotism, and unity

Main article: patriotism

• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ~ President Abraham Lincoln

• Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion. ~ Lord Acton Dalberg in 'Nationality', in The Home and Foreign Review (July 1862)

• A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

• Republicans are nothing more than Democrats with poor judgment.
  • Jacob M. Appel, Arborophilia

• I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"
  • Bill Hicks, Rant in E-Minor (released posthumously, 1997)

• Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
  • Samuel Johnson, April 7, 1775, in conversation with a numerous company.
  • Firsthand report by James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson Vol. 2, (1791). [1]

• Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
  • George Bernard Shaw, reported in Norman Thomas et al., eds., The World Tomorrow‎ (1934), p. 401.

• Right wing (definition): As with the left wing, half the propulsive force of a flightless bird. ~ Richard Summerbell, Abnormally Happy (1985)

• You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it. ~ Malcolm X

• Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols? ~ Edward Whittemore, Nile Shadows (1983)

Business and economy

• Aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final overthrow, in language as in politics.
  • W. D. Whitney, Language and the Study of Language: Twelve Lectures on the Principles of Linguistic Science (1868), p. 150.

• Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
  • Attributed to William F. Buckley, Jr. by Jonathon Green, The Cynics' Lexicon: A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984) , p. 34

• Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.
  • Nikolai Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913), p. 5.

Corruption

• An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
  • Attributed to Simon Cameron by Allen Johnson, Chronicles of America Series, Yale University Press, 1918. (Cameron was forced to resign as United States Secretary of War in 1862, due to allegations of corruption.)

• People say I steal. Well, all politicians steal. ~ Huey P. Long

• POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary

• POLITICS, n. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary

• All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  • Lord Acton, letter to Mandell Creighton, April 1887. Reprinted in John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, 1949, Boston:The Becon Press, p. 364

• A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him. ~ Walter Williams

Democracy

Main article: Democracy

• In Switzerland, 500 years of democracy and peace. And what does it produce? The cuckoo clock. ~ Graham Greene, The Third Man

• Socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen. ~ Leon Trotsky

• Democracy is more dangerous than fire. Fire can't vote itself immune to water. ~ Michael Z. Williamson

• Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
  • Gore Vidal, "Gods and Greens" (1989), in A View from the Diner's Club (1991)

• Because democracy is not a spectator sport. ~ US presidential election slogan, Democrats (2004)

• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
  • H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

• The 20th century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.
  • Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy, 1997, University of Illinois Press, ch. 2 p. 18

• The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. ~ Edward Dowling, Editor and Priest, Chicago Daily News (28 July 1941)

• Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
  • Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons: The Official Report, House of Commons (5th Series), 11 November 1947, vol. 444, cc. 206–07.

• Votes count, but resources decide ~ Stein Rokkan

• Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried. ~ Winston Churchill

Dictatorships, totalitarianism, and tyranny

• If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator. ~ CNN.com, (December 18, 2000) George Bush

• Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
  • Winston Churchill, letter with unspecified recipient (November 11, 1937), reported in Winston Churchill, Step by Step: 1936-1939‎ (1939), p. 159.

• The craziest of all political systems, the unique dictatorship, found its earned end. History will note for eternity that the German people were not able on their own initiative to shake off the yoke of the National Socialists. The victory of the Americans, English and Russians was a necessary occurrence to disrupt the National Socialists’ delusions and plans for world domination.
  • Friedrich Kellner, My Opposition, diary entry for May 1, 1945

• I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.
  • Russian: Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это - кто и как будет считать голоса.
  • Joseph Stalin, 1923, as quoted in The Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary (1992) by Boris Bazhanov [Saint Petersburg] (Борис Бажанов. Воспоминания бывшего секретаря Сталина). (Text online in Russian).
  • Common paraphrase: "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

• There is only one difference between dictatorship and democracy. In democracy, you vote and then take orders; in dictatorship you don't waste time voting. ~ Charles Bukowski

• Wherever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
  • President Harry S Truman, lecture at Columbia University (April 28, 1959).

• What good fortune for governments that the people do not think ~ Adolf Hitler

• Communism was a great system for making people equally poor. In fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. -The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.

• "Many of our moral and political policies are designed to preempt what we know to be the worst features of human nature. The checks and balances in a democracy, for instance, were invented in explicit recognition of the fact that human leaders will always be tempted to arrogate power to themselves. Likewise, our sensitivity to racism comes from an awareness that groups of humans, left to their own devices, are apt to discriminate and oppress other groups, often in ugly ways. History also tells us that a desire to enforce dogma and suppress heretics is a recurring human weakness, one that has led to recurring waves of gruesome oppression and violence. A recognition that there is a bit of Torquemada in everyone should make us wary of any attempt to enforce a consensus or demonize those who challenge it." ~ What is Your Dangerous Idea? (2007) ed., John Brockman, "Introduction," Steven Pinker, p. xxxi.

• Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
  • Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 1944

• Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
  • Discworld politics explained (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Equality, freedom, liberty, and rights

• All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
  • George Orwell, Animal Farm (1955), Ch. 10, p. 148.

• As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
  • Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu (1908), p. 20.

• Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting that vote.
  • Author unknown; reported in William F. Shughart, Robert D. Tollison, Policy Challenges and Political Responses (2005), p. 130 (noting that the quote is frequently attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but is anachronistic in that it contains the phrase "to have for lunch", a usage which does not appear until the 1840s).

• Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
  • Lord Acton, "Freedom in Antiquity", in The History of Freedom and Other Essays: And Other Essays‎ (1907), p. 22.

• To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect.
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, reported in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Correspondence, Writings, Speeches (1981), p. 249.

• Self government is preferable to good government.
  • Author unknown; variously reported as an old maxim or slogan, as reported in East Africa and Rhodesia‎ (1960), p. 1087, and Douglas Jay, Socialism in the New Society‎ (1962), p. 104; and attributed to authors such as Campbell Bannerman, reported in William White, Notes and Queries‎ (1942), p. 138; Alfred Milner, reported in Vernon McKenzie, Here Lies Goebbels! (1940), p. 184.

Government bureaucracy

• Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
  • Oscar Wilde

• Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.
  • Henri Queuille, The Bureaucrat (1985)

• The bigger the politics, the smaller the print.
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

Liberalism

• Liberalism is the transformation of mankind into cattle. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
• Liberalism is part of a religious disorder that demands a belief that life is controllable. ~ Ann Coulter in How to Talk to a Liberal if You Must (2004)

Men and women

• It will be years — not in my time — before a woman will become Prime Minister. ~ Margaret Thatcher (1974)

Politics, laws of politics

• Political technology determines political success. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics

• Sound doctrine is sound politics. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics

• In politics, you have your word and your friends; go back on either and you're dead. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics

• In volunteer politics, a builder can build faster than a destroyer can destroy. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics

• In politics, nothing moves unless it's pushed. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics

• Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics. ~ Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics

• A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. ~ Daniel Webster

• A leader has to lead, or otherwise he has no business in politics.
• Harry Truman, reported in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman‎ (1974), p. 422.

• We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
  • Samuel Gompers, "Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing" (editorial), American Federationist (May 1906)

• All growth, including political growth, is the result of risk-taking. ~ Jude Wanniski in The Wall Street Journal.

• All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies. ~ Dr. John Arbuthnot as quoted in Hoyts New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922)

• All politics are based on the indifference of the majority. ~ James Reston

• The best politics is right action. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

• Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan in The Duenna. Act ii. Sc. 4.

• A cult is a religion with no political power.
  • Tom Wolfe, In Our Time, "Entr'actes and Canapes",1980

• Don't follow leaders, watch your parkin' meters.
  • Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues, 1965

• The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

• Envy is the cause of political division. ~ Democritus

• Everything you do is political. ~ Nandor Tanczos

• Finality is not the language of politics.
  • Benjamin Disraeli, speech in the House of Commons, 28 February 1859

• Good politics are often inextricably intertwined. ~ Morris Udall

• I have no faith in political arithmetic. ~ Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations

• In politics an absurdity is not a handicap. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

• The key to understanding the American system is to imagine that you have the power to make nearly any law you want. But your worst enemy will be the one to enforce it. ~ Rick Cook

• Man is by nature a political animal.
  • Aristotle, Politics, chapter 2 (Bekker I.1253a2)

• The most important political office is that of private citizen. ~ Louis Dembitz Brandeis American Supreme Court Justice

• No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses. ~ Vladimir Lenin (1917)

• Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

• Campaign promises are—by long democratic tradition—the least binding form of human commitment.
  • Antonin Scalia, Republican Party v. White, 536 U.S. 765 (2002) (majority opinion)

• Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.
  • Often quoted by Arthur C. Clarke as one of his favorite remarks of Jawaharlal Nehru, though some of his earliest citations of it, in Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age (1967), p. 154 indicate that Nehru may himself been either quoting or paraphrasing a statement of Vinoba Bhave.

• Politics is a concentric series of conspiracies in which the last party to conspire emerges victorious ~ George Obiozor

• Die Politik is keine exakte Wissenschaft.
  • Politics is not an exact science.
  • Otto von Bismarck, speech to Prussian upper house (18 December 1863)
  • Variant: Die Politik is keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der Herren Proffessoren sieh einbilden, sondern eine Kunst.
    • Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.
    • Expression in the Reichstag (1884), as quoted in The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes.

• Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies. ~ Groucho Marx

• Politics is the art of putting people under obligation to you. ~ Jacob L. Arvey (1990?)

• Die Politic ist die Lehre von Möglichen.
  • Politics is the art of the possible.
  • Otto von Bismarck, remark to Meyer von Waldeck, 11 August 1867. Quoted in Heinz Amelung, Bismarck-Worte, 1918; as reported in The Yale Book of Quotations, Yale University Press, 2006. This is widely attributed to Bismarck but there is no firsthand account of his exact words, as discussed in Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier, Macmillan, 2006.

• Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
  • John Kenneth Galbraith, letter to John F. Kennedy, 2 March 1962, printed in Galbraith's Ambassador's Journal (1969)

• Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves,—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence.
  • Henry David Thoreau, "Life Without Principle", The Atlantic Monthly 12 71, October 1863: pp. 484–495

• Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects. ~ Lester B. Pearson

• Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's problems. ~ Marshall McLuhan

• Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen. ~ Dwight Eisenhower
  • Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907: ch. 22

• Stupidity is not a handicap in politics. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

• There is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends, and that is having the right enemies.
  • Anonymous, Economist 375: 8432 (25 June 2005), p. 84

• Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics. ~ Aristotle

• Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness. ~ Anthony D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

• University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. ~ Henry Kissinger

• We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy. ~ Martin L. Gross

• What's real in politics is what the voters decide is real. ~ Ben J. Wattenberg

• All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
  • Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics 1932

• Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever. ~ Albert Einstein

Political jokes

• The problem with political jokes is that they get elected.
  • Variously attributed to Will Rogers and George Bernard Shaw

• … that is the nature of politics: poly, meaning more than one, and ticks, meaning blood-sucking parasites.
  • Kinky Friedman, attributed by him to "some guy in Corpus"
  • Quoted in Taylor, Michael Ray, "Poly-Ticks as Unusual", Nashville Scene, October 11, 2007. URL accessed on 2008-03-19.
  • Alternative version quoted in Arrillaga, Pauline, "On the Road with Texas Candidate Kinky", Associated Press (via Yahoo! News), 21 October 2006. URL accessed on 2008-03-19.

• I don't make jokes. I just watch the Government and report the facts.
  • Will Rogers
  • Quoted in Colton, Joel; Caroline Farrar Ware (1972). The Twentieth Century. Nineteenth Century and After. pp. page 9. Retrieved on 2008-03-19.  

• Politicians are like nappies, they should be changed regularly and for the same reason.
  • Ken Dodd

• What do you call a politician displaying his honesty in public? A rare work of art...
  • Anonymous

Politicians and lawyers

• The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy. ~ Edwin W. Edwards

• A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground. ~ H.L. Mencken

• Politician: A bundle of gaseous ambition cleverly packaged as a public servant or a corporate sales manager. ~ Rick Bayan, The Cynic's Dictionary

• Politics is the entertainment industry for ugly people. ~ Mark Turpin

• Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

• They [the people] may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. ~ Carl W. Buechner

• The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes. ~ Winston Churchill

Power and money

• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you really want to test his character, give him power. ~ Abraham Lincoln

• In public policy, it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard — and by whom. ~ Ralph Reed, head of Christian Coalition, in memo to Enron executives, (2000)

• Talking to politicians is fine, but with a little money they hear you better. ~ Justin Dart, chairman, Port Industries (1982)

• Politics has gotten so expensive that it takes a lot of money to even get beat with. ~ Will Rogers (1931)

• There are two things you need for success in politics. Money and I can't think of the other. ~ Senator Mark Hannah (R-OH), 1903

• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
  • P. J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991)

• All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from the want of honor or virtue, so much as the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation. ~ John Adams

• If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks ill deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. ~ Thomas Jefferson

• History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance. ~ James Madison

• If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. ~ Andrew Jackson

• The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

• Throned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

• Let me issue and control a nation's money, and I care not who writes its laws. ~ Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1790)

Presidency

• PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary

Public opinion and polls

• That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion. ~ Thomas Huxley in "Universities, Actual & Ideal"

• If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are the politically awake and the hypnotized. ~ Doris "Granny D" Haddock

• In politics, there are things which you do but don't talk about them and things which you talk about but don't do anything. ~ Constantine Karamanlis

Public safety, domestic security, and gun control

• The streets are safe in Philadelphia — it's only the people who make them unsafe. ~ Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia

• Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak. ~ George Orwell

• No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms. ~ Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution (1776)

• [The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. ~ James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

• Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. ~ Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

• The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned. ~ Pennsylvania's Constitution of 1790

Public service

• If there is anything a public servant hates to do it's something for the public. ~ Anonymous

• Each generation is responsible to make the future of the next. ~ Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (Speech at the Capitol Visitor Center, 07.12.2008)

The "Masses"

• They [governments] talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the fools and the suckers. ~ Graham Greene, The Third Man

• The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie, than to a small one. ~ Adolf Hitler

Reform

• Politicians are all the same. They promise reforms then reform their promises. ~ Leonid S. Sukhorukov, All About Everything (2005)

• Reason accepts no authority above itself and is necessarily subversive.~ Allan Bloom

• Reform is not for the shortwinded. ~ Arthur Vanderbilt, New Jersey Supreme Court Justice (1949)

• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ President John F. Kennedy

• You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. ~ Peter F. Hamilton (through character Endron) in The Neutronium Alchemist

• A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

• We must reform if we would conserve. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Campaign finance reform

• Today's political campaigns function as collection agencies for broadcasters. You simply transfer money from contributors to television stations. ~ Senator Bill Bradley, 2000

• We've got a real irony here. We have politicians selling access to something we all own -our government. And then we have broadcasters selling access to something we all own — our airwaves. It's a terrible system. ~ Newton Minow, former Federal Communications Commission chairman (2000)

• You're more likely to see Elvis again than to see this bill pass the Senate. ~ Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (1999) on the McCain-Feingold Bill on Campaign Reform

• Unless we fundamentally change this system, ultimately campaign finance will consume our democracy. ~ Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) (1996)

• [Buckley v. Valeo is] one of the most weakly reasoned, poorly written, initially contradictory court opinions I've ever read. ~ Senator (and former federal district court judge) George J. Mitchell (D-ME) (1990)

• We don't buy votes. What we do is we buy a candidate's stance on an issue. ~ Allen Pross, executive director, California Medical Association's PAC (1989)

• Political action committees and moneyed interests are setting the nation's political agenda. Are we saying that only the rich have brains in this country? Or only people who have influential friends who have money can be in the Senate? ~ Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) (1988)

• The day may come when we'll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn't come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 today. ~ George Washington Plunkett (1905)

• Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor, not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscure and propitious fortune. ~ James Madison, Federalist 57 (1788)

Religion, separation of church and state

• Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics. ~ Wendell Phillips

• Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. ~ Jamie Raskin, 2006-03-01
  • Raskin was responding to state senator Nancy Jacobs at a hearing on a proposed Maryland constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage [2]. At the time, Raskin was himself a candidate for senate.

• The true destiny of America is religious, not political: it is spiritual, not physical. ~ Alvin R. Dyer in Ensign (November 1968)

Voting and participation

• Decisions are made by those who show up. ~ unknown; variously attributed to Woody Allen and Harry S Truman

• Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television? ~ Art Buchwald,Quotations for our Time by Laurence J. Peter (1977)

• If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. ~ Emma Goldman

• If you don't believe in the resurrection of the dead, look at politicians seeking re-election. ~ Leonid S. Sukhorukov, All About Everything (2005)

• It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. ~ Robert H. Jackson, United States Attorney General & Assoc. Justice

• Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy. ~ Confucius

• Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair. ~ George Burns

• Next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election. ~ George Carlin

• Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy." ~Hazen Pingree, former mayor of Detroit and governor of Michigan.

• The French approach election differently than the Americans... they vote. ~ Bill Maher

War, military, and peace

• Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
  • Mao Zedong, "On Protracted War" (May 1938)

• Take the so-called politics of fear — the constant reference to risks, from hoodies on the street corner to international terrorism. Whatever the truth of these risks and the best ways of dealing with them, the politics of fear plays on an assumption that people cannot bear the uncertainties associated with them. Politics then becomes a question of who can better deliver an illusion of control.
  • Ex-vicar Mark Vernon; quoted in "God. Who knows?", BBC News, 4 December 2006. URL accessed on 2006-12-10.

• This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
  • Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell address, January 17, 1961; Final TV Talk 1/17/61 (1), Box 38, Speech Series, Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President, 1953-61, Eisenhower Library; National Archives and Records Administration.

See also

• Censorship
• Diplomacy
• Education
• Freedom of speech
• United States Congress

From Wikiversity

These learning materials are part of unit 2 of the course Introduction to International Relations

Contents 1 Liberalism 2 History 3 Views 4 References

Liberalism

Liberalism seeks to defend and protect individuals' personal, civil, social, and economic rights and freedoms.^[1] Often, it is categorized by a laissez-faire style of government.^[1] There are two different branches of Liberalism: reform liberalism and classical liberalism.

History

Classical Liberalism was started in the mid-1700 as a reaction against absolute monarchy, religious persecution, and feudal economical and social constraints.

Reform Liberalism began in the late 1800s. It was a reaction against the effects of unconstrained capitalism and socialist ideas. Some key thinkers of this ideology include J.S. Mill, J. Dewey, J.M. Keynes, and J. Rawls.

Views

Liberalism in general believes that the rational self interest of people will improve society. It also focuses in limited government, individual rights, free trade, and equality. While both branches of liberalism idealizes these values, they have different views on how those should be achieved. Reform liberalism promotes equality of opportunity and the ability to enjoy rights (positive liberty) as a way to encourage democracy. Government policy should be used to create equality. Classical liberalism discourages government intervention and emphasizes free competition (negative liberty).

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Boyd A. Martin (1948). "Liberalism". The Western Political Quarterly.  

From Wikisource

Liberalism by Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

Chapter I→

Information about this edition

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923. The author died in 1929, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

(Redirected to Introduction to Philosophy/Liberalism article)

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

The basic liberal-libertarian debate is between John Rawls (the famous advocate of Liberalism) and Robert Nozick (pertaining to Libertarianism). Rawls argues that what should motivate an optimal political society is placing ourselves from the point of view outside that society. In other words, in order to find out what kind of government would be the best, one must ask what one would desire if one did not know what role he/she was going to play in that particular society (Rawls calls this the Veil of Ignorance). From behind this Veil of Ignorance, one should not have any knowledge of any of the particular aspects of the social institutions or distributions in the state. Rawls thinks that given this objective disposition, one would come up with a government whose principles were such that all people in the society would have equal opportunities for everything (and inequalities would be allowed, but only if they maintained to benefit the worst off).

In contrast, Nozick argues against Rawls that, when pertaining to Distributive Justice, one must not take an ahistorical, patterned view of distribution, but rather look at the situation historically. That is, a distribution is just if it satisfies the principles of justice in attainment and of justice in transfer. For Nozick, one can acquire (own) something in two ways: either that thing was previously unowned, and the person acquired it while leaving enough and as good of it left for others, or that thing was transfered to him/her by an act of legitimately freely informed consent on the part of the previous owner. He allows also for some principles of retribution if an act is unjust, and allows here for there to be some orientations of patterned redistribution. However, at base, Nozick's point is that when trying to decide whether an ownership is just, we must decide whether the individual acquired it legitimately, not whether it brings about the greatest overall happiness (read: Utilitarianism) or benefits the worst off.

Thomas Nagel would give a third opinion to try and reconcile these claims by pointing out that the problem in this debate and subsequently in all of political theory is the delicate balancing and often asymmetry between concerns of personal politics (the individual's concerns) and collective politics (the concerns for others). This is a bit of an echoing of Rousseau's theory of the General Will, where he tries to account for individuals acting in one way to support their private, personal desires, and in another way to act according to concerns of the whole. John Stuart Mill also deals with this dichotomy by claiming that societies need to promote the greatest overall happiness for the greatest number of people (his principle of Utilitarianism) while still maintaining that it (the Government) enables the possibility for its citizens to individually pursue the betterment of their own lives.

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