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 Liberal Republican Party was an American political party that was organized in May 1872 to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872. The party emerged in Missouri under the leadership of Senator Carl Schurz and soon attracted other opponents of Grant; Liberal Republicans decried the scandals of the Grant administration and sought civil service reform. The party opposed Grant's Reconstruction policies, particularly the Enforcement Acts that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan. It lost in a landslide, and disappeared from the national stage after the 1872 election.

The Republican Party had emerged as the dominant party in the aftermath of the Civil War, but many original Republicans became dissatisfied with the leadership of President Grant. Prominent liberal leaders like Schurz, Charles Sumner and Lyman Trumbull had been leaders in the fight against slavery and for the first stages of Reconstruction. They considered the task accomplished, and thought continued radical policies to be oppressive. By 1872, they demanded an end to Reconstruction and a restoration of self-government to the South. (Full article...)

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1873 portrait by George Frederic Watts

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.

Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain. He engaged in written debate with Whewell. (Full article...)

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

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