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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Individual contributors to classical liberalism and political liberalism are associated with philosophers of the Enlightenment. Liberalism as a specifically named ideology begins in the late 18th century as a movement towards self-government and away from aristocracy. It included the ideas of self-determination, the primacy of the individual and the nation as opposed to the state and religion as being the fundamental units of law, politics and economy.

Since then liberalism broadened to include a wide range of approaches from Americans Ronald Dworkin, Richard Rorty, John Rawls and Francis Fukuyama as well as the Indian Amartya Sen and the Peruvian Hernando de Soto. Some of these people moved away from liberalism while others espoused other ideologies before turning to liberalism. There are many different views of what constitutes liberalism, and some liberals would feel that some of the people on this list were not true liberals. It is intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. Theorists whose ideas were mainly typical for one country should be listed in that country's section of liberalism worldwide. Generally only thinkers are listed whereas politicians are only listed when they also made substantial contributions to liberal theory beside their active political work. (Full article...)

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John Dewey (/ˈduːi/; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.

The overriding theme of Dewey's works was his profound belief in democracy, be it in politics, education, or communication and journalism. As Dewey himself stated in 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous." Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—to be major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. He asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by communication among citizens, experts and politicians. (Full article...)

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

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Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.

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— Pierre Trudeau, Defining liberalism at the 1968 Liberal leadership convention.

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General images

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

Image 1Friedrich Hayek (from Neoliberalism)
Image 2Noam 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 3John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty greatly influenced 19th-century liberalism (from Liberalism)
Image 4Monument to the liberals of the 19th century in Agra del Orzán neighborhood, La Coruña, Galicia, (Spain) (from Liberalism)
Image 5Montesquieu, who argued for the separation of the powers of government (from Liberalism)
Image 6Per capita income during the Great Depression (from Neoliberalism)
Image 7GDP per capita in Chile and Latin America 1950–2010 (time under Pinochet highlighted) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 8Raif 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 9T. 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 10The 2017–2018 Russian protests were organized by Russia's liberal opposition. (from Liberalism)
Image 11John 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 12The 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 13Pamphlet calling for a protest of economic policy in 1983 following the economic crisis (from Neoliberalism)
Image 14Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism (from Liberalism)
Image 15Builders in West Berlin, 1952 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 16Franklin D. Roosevelt (from Liberalism)
Image 17The 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 18Chilean (orange) and average Latin American (blue) rates of growth of GDP (1971–2007) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 19Benjamin Constant, a Franco-Swiss political activist and theorist (from Liberalism)
Image 20Unemployment in Chile and South America (1980–1990) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 21U.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 22Julius Faucher (from Liberalism)
Image 23Madame de Staël (from Liberalism)
Image 24Wealth inequality in the United States increased from 1989 to 2013. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 25Sismondi, who wrote the first critique of the free market from a liberal perspective in 1819 (from Liberalism)
Image 26John Locke was the first to develop a liberal philosophy, including the right to private property and the consent of the governed. (from Liberalism)
Image 27Ludwig Erhard (from Neoliberalism)
Image 28Execution 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 29As 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 30The iconic painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, a tableau of the July Revolution in 1830 (from Liberalism)
Image 31United States incarceration rate per 100,000 population, 1925–2014 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 32Member nations of the International Monetary Fund (from Neoliberalism)
Image 33Gustave de Molinari (from Liberalism)
Image 34John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) argued for the importance of freedom of speech. (from Liberalism)