Portal:Liberalism

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Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, constitutional government and privacy rights. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.

Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings and traditional conservatism with representative democracy, rule of law, and equality under the law. Liberals also ended mercantilist policies, royal monopolies, and other trade barriers, instead promoting free trade and marketization. Philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct tradition based on the social contract, arguing that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property, and governments must not violate these rights. While the British liberal tradition has emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism has emphasized rejecting authoritarianism and is linked to nation-building. (Full article...)

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The Prince of Orange landing at Torbay
as depicted in an illustration by Jan Hoynck van Papendrecht

The Glorious Revolution is the sequence of events that led to the deposition of James II and VII in November 1688. He was replaced by his daughter Mary II and her Dutch husband, William III of Orange, who was also his nephew. The two ruled as joint monarchs of England, Scotland, and Ireland until Mary's death in 1694. The Revolution itself was relatively bloodless, but pro-Stuart revolts between 1689 and 1746 caused significant casualties, while the political movement known as Jacobitism persisted into the late 18th century. William's invasion was the last successful invasion of England.

Despite his own Catholicism, for various reasons James became king in February 1685 with widespread backing from the Protestant majorities in England and Scotland, as well as largely Catholic Ireland. Although his policies quickly eroded this support, it was not until June 1688 that dissatisfaction became a political crisis. The birth of James Francis Edward on 10 June displaced his Protestant elder sister Mary as the heir presumptive. The prospect of a Catholic dynasty destroyed James's political authority, and led a few of his domestic opponents to seek external support in removing him. (Full article...)

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Portrait of Bentham by Henry William Pickersgill

Jeremy Bentham (/ˈbɛnθəm/; 4 February 1747/8 O.S. [15 February 1748 N.S.] – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment, and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin), calling them "nonsense upon stilts". Bentham was also a sharp critic of legal fictions. (Full article...)

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John Locke John Stuart Mill T. H. Green John Dewey Norberto Bobbio John Rawls Isaiah Berlin David Lloyd George

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Masked in smiles and peasant charm, or in anger, the Russian Premier releases his deepest feelings, and if we are not shaken by them, it is because we are not in close touch with reality. In the West, the connections between opinion, feeling, and bodily motion have been broken. We have lost the expressive power. It is in the use of such power, falsely exploiting his Russian and peasant background, that Khrushchev has shown himself to be an adept. He has passion always ready to exploit, and thought he lies, he has the advantage. The principles of Western liberalism seem no longer to lend themselves to effective action. Deprived of the expressive power, we are awed by it, have a hunger for it, and are afraid of it. Thus we praise the gray dignity of our soft-spoken leaders, but in our hearts we are suckers for passionate outbursts, even when those passionate outbursts are hypocritical and falsely motivated. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."

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— Saul Bellow, It All Adds Up, 1994.

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General images

The following are images from various liberalism-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Wealth inequality in the United States increased from 1989 to 2013. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 2Execution of José María de Torrijos y Uriarte and his men in 1831 as Spanish King Ferdinand VII took repressive measures against the liberal forces in his country (from Liberalism)
Image 3U.S. President Bush, Canadian PM Mulroney, and Mexican President Salinas participate in the ceremonies to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). (from Neoliberalism)
Image 4John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty greatly influenced 19th-century liberalism (from Liberalism)
Image 5The Great Depression, with its periods of worldwide economic hardship, formed the backdrop against which the Keynesian Revolution took place (the image is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depiction of destitute pea-pickers in California, taken in March 1936). (from Liberalism)
Image 6Builders in West Berlin, 1952 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 7Monument to the liberals of the 19th century in Agra del Orzán neighborhood, La Coruña, Galicia, (Spain) (from Liberalism)
Image 8Benjamin Constant, a Franco-Swiss political activist and theorist (from Liberalism)
Image 9Julius Faucher (from Liberalism)
Image 10As a liberal nationalist, K. J. Ståhlberg (1865–1952), the President of Finland, anchored the state in liberal democracy, guarded the fragile germ of the rule of law, and embarked on internal reforms. (from Liberalism)
Image 11Franklin D. Roosevelt (from Liberalism)
Image 12Sismondi, who wrote the first critique of the free market from a liberal perspective in 1819 (from Liberalism)
Image 13GDP per capita in Chile and Latin America 1950–2010 (time under Pinochet highlighted) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 14John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of modern times and whose ideas, which are still widely felt, formalized modern liberal economic policy. (from Liberalism)
Image 15Noam Chomsky's 1999 book Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order is an open critique of neoliberalism and the American economic structure (from Neoliberalism)
Image 16Ludwig Erhard (from Neoliberalism)
Image 17Member nations of the International Monetary Fund (from Neoliberalism)
Image 18Pamphlet calling for a protest of economic policy in 1983 following the economic crisis (from Neoliberalism)
Image 19United States incarceration rate per 100,000 population, 1925–2014 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 20John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) argued for the importance of freedom of speech. (from Liberalism)
Image 21T. H. Green, an influential liberal philosopher who established in Prolegomena to Ethics (1884) the first major foundations for what later became known as positive liberty and in a few years, his ideas became the official policy of the Liberal Party in Britain, precipitating the rise of social liberalism and the modern welfare state (from Liberalism)
Image 22Chilean (orange) and average Latin American (blue) rates of growth of GDP (1971–2007) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 23Madame de Staël (from Liberalism)
Image 24Per capita income during the Great Depression (from Neoliberalism)
Image 25The European Union–Mercosur free trade agreement, which would form one of the world's largest free trade areas, has been denounced by environmental activists and indigenous rights campaigners. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 26Unemployment in Chile and South America (1980–1990) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 27John Locke was the first to develop a liberal philosophy, including the right to private property and the consent of the governed. (from Liberalism)
Image 28Friedrich Hayek (from Neoliberalism)
Image 29Montesquieu, who argued for the separation of the powers of government (from Liberalism)
Image 30Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism (from Liberalism)
Image 31Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian writer and the creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals, who was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam" in 2014 (from Liberalism)
Image 32The iconic painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, a tableau of the July Revolution in 1830 (from Liberalism)
Image 33Gustave de Molinari (from Liberalism)
Image 34The 2017–2018 Russian protests were organized by Russia's liberal opposition. (from Liberalism)