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. Different liberals espouse various and sometimes conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support liberal democracy, private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. 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. The 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 emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism emphasized rejecting authoritarianism and is linked to nation-building. (Full article...)

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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that codifies some of the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a United Nations (UN) committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, it was accepted by the General Assembly as Resolution 217 during its third session on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France. Of the 58 members of the UN at the time, 48 voted in favour, none against, eight abstained, and two did not vote.

A foundational text in the history of human and civil rights, the Declaration consists of 30 articles detailing an individual's "basic rights and fundamental freedoms" and affirming their universal character as inherent, inalienable, and applicable to all human beings. Adopted as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations", the UDHR commits nations to recognize all humans as being "born free and equal in dignity and rights" regardless of "nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status". (Full article...)

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John Locke, F.R.S. (1697)

John Locke (/lɒk/; 29 August 1632 (O.S.) – 28 October 1704 (O.S.)) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". His important works include A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Two Treatises of Government (1689/90), both published anonymously, and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689/90). His writing on toleration contends that religion is a matter for the individual and that the churches are voluntary associations, ruling out religious coercion and uniformity; these lead to the idea of separation of church and state. His Two Treatises on Government argues for government based on the consent of the governed and the right to revolt against tyrannous government, which has lost consent. The Two Treatises had a direct influence on the language that Thomas Jefferson chose in his drafting the July 1776 Declaration of Independence during the American Revolution.

Locke lived through the tumultuous political era of the English Civil War and Commonwealth of England after the execution of Charles I, Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and the 1688 Glorious Revolution. These experiences affected his political thinking and life choices. During the Interregnum, Locke won a place at Christ Church, Oxford after attending the prestigious Westminster School. He spent 15 years at Oxford, first as a student, then as a tutor, pursuing medical and other scientific interests in a circle of friends. In 1666, Locke became an associate of Lord Shaftesbury, a key figure in English political life after the Restoration (1660), and Locke was appointed to governmental posts at Shaftesbury's recommendation. Locke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (1668). When Shaftesbury fell from royal favor and died shortly thereafter, Locke went into political exile for five years in the Netherlands (1683–85). There he wrote some of his most important works. During this period, he gained the patronage of Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke. Locke returned to England from exile, accompanying Queen Mary II in 1689. He published three of his most notable works soon after his return. He served as a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, then retired from public life due to ill health. For the last fourteen years of his life, he lived in the household of Sir Francis Masham and his wife, philosopher Lady Masham, whom Locke had known since she was a young woman. (Full article...)

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We join this first fundamental question with a second, that of toleration understood in a general way. The political culture of a democratic society is always marked by a diversity of opposing and irreconcilable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines. Some of these are perfectly reasonable, and this diversity among reasonable doctrines political liberalism sees as the inevitable long-run result of the powers of human reason at work within the background of enduring free institutions. Thus, the second question is what are the grounds of toleration so understood and given the fact of reasonable pluralism as the inevitable outcome of free institutions? Combining both questions we have: how is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?

The most intractable struggles, political liberalism assumes, are confessedly for the sake of highest things: for religion, for philosophical views of the world, and for different moral conceptions of the good. We should find it remarkable that, so deeply opposed in these ways, just cooperation among free and equal citizens is possible at all. In fact, historical experience suggests that it rarely is. If the problem addressed is all too familiar, political liberalism proposes, I believe, a somewhat unfamiliar resolution of it. To state this resolution we need a certain family of ideas. In this lecture I set out the more central of these and offer a definition at the end (§8).

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— John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 1993

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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 2Raif 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 3Sismondi, who wrote the first critique of the free market from a liberal perspective in 1819 (from Liberalism)
Image 4Montesquieu, who argued for the separation of the powers of government (from Liberalism)
Image 5Gustave de Molinari (from Liberalism)
Image 6Monument to the liberals of the 19th century in Agra del Orzán neighborhood, La Coruña, Galicia (Spain) (from Liberalism)
Image 7Per capita income during the Great Depression (from Neoliberalism)
Image 8The 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 9Julius Faucher (from Liberalism)
Image 10Franklin D. Roosevelt (from Liberalism)
Image 11Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism (from Liberalism)
Image 12Chilean (orange) and average Latin American (blue) rates of growth of GDP (1971–2007) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 13T. 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 14Ludwig Erhard (from Neoliberalism)
Image 15As 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 16GDP per capita in Chile and Latin America 1950–2010 (time under Pinochet highlighted) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 17John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) argued for the importance of freedom of speech. (from Liberalism)
Image 18U.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 19United States incarceration rate per 100,000 population, 1925–2014 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 20The iconic painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, a tableau of the July Revolution in 1830 (from Liberalism)
Image 21Madame de Staël (from Liberalism)
Image 22Execution 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 23The US federal minimum wage if it had kept pace with productivity compared to the actual wage (from Neoliberalism)
Image 24John Locke was the first to develop a liberal philosophy, including the right to private property and the consent of the governed. (from Liberalism)
Image 25Benjamin Constant, a Franco-Swiss political activist and theorist (from Liberalism)
Image 26Friedrich Hayek (from Neoliberalism)
Image 27Pamphlet calling for a protest of economic policy in 1983 following the economic crisis (from Neoliberalism)
Image 28Builders in West Berlin, 1952 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 29Ronald Reagan (left) and Margaret Thatcher (right) were responsible for the popularisation of Neoliberalism. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 30John 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 31The 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 32John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty greatly influenced 19th-century liberalism (from Liberalism)
Image 33Member nations of the International Monetary Fund (from Neoliberalism)
Image 34Unemployment in Chile and South America (1980–1990) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 35The 2017–2018 Russian protests were organized by Russia's liberal opposition. (from Liberalism)