Thread: Real Liberalism
View Single Post
  #1   Report Post  
posted to rec.boats
iBoaterer[_2_] iBoaterer[_2_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Sep 2011
Posts: 7,588
Default Real Liberalism

I know by their postings that many conservatives here don't have a clue
what true liberalism is about. Harry doesn't have a clue, neither. So,
to clear things up, from Wiki:

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom")[1] is the belief in
the importance of liberty and equal rights.[2] Liberals espouse a wide
array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but
generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal
democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, and
freedom of religion.[3][4][5][6][7] These ideas are widely accepted,
even by 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 eighteenth century, and social
liberalism, which became popular in the twentieth 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 nobility, established religion, absolute
monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John
Locke, who is often credited for the creation 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
absolutism in 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 revolutionaries in the American Revolution and the French Revolution
used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of tyrannical
rule. The nineteenth century saw liberal governments established in
nations across Europe, Latin America, and North America. Liberal ideas
spread even further in the twentieth century, when liberal democracies
triumphed in two world wars and survived major ideological challenges
from fascism and communism. Today, liberalism in its many forms remains
as a political force to varying degrees of power and influence on all
major continents.