Portal:Liberalism

The Liberalism portal

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 sometimes conflicting 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. 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 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. 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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Portrait by Underwood & Underwood

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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Liberals said chemical weapons would be used against our troops. That didn't happen. They predicted huge civilian casualties. That didn't happen. They said Americans would turn against the war as our troops came home in body bags. That didn't happen. They warned of a mammoth terrorist attack in America if we invaded Iraq. That didn't happen. Just two weeks ago, they claimed American troops were caught in another Vietnam quagmire. That didn't happen. The only mishap liberals can carp about is that some figurines from an Iraqi museum were broken-a relief to college students everywhere who have ever been forced to gaze upon Mesopotamiam pottery. We're not talking about Rodins here. So the Iraqis looted. Oh well. War are messy. Liberalism is part of a religious disorder that demands a belief that life is controllable.

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— Ann Coulter, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), 2004.

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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 3Per capita income during the Great Depression (from Neoliberalism)
Image 4John 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 5Portrait of Adam Smith (from Liberalism)
Image 6Pamphlet calling for a protest of economic policy in 1983 following the economic crisis (from Neoliberalism)
Image 7Potrait of Tocqueville c.1850 (from Liberalism)
Image 8Julius Faucher (from Liberalism)
Image 9Madame de Staël (from Liberalism)
Image 10Portrait of John Stuart Mill, c. 1870 (from Liberalism)
Image 11Chilean (orange) and average Latin American (blue) rates of growth of GDP (1971–2007) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 12John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty greatly influenced 19th-century liberalism (from Liberalism)
Image 13John M. Keynes c.1929 (from Liberalism)
Image 14The 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 15Franklin D. Roosevelt (from Liberalism)
Image 16Amartya Sen c.2000 (from Liberalism)
Image 17Friedrich Hayek (from Neoliberalism)
Image 18Portrait of John Locke (1697) (from Liberalism)
Image 19Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism (from Liberalism)
Image 20U.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 21John Locke was the first to develop a liberal philosophy, including the right to private property and the consent of the governed. (from Liberalism)
Image 22Unemployment in Chile and South America (1980–1990) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 23United States incarceration rate per 100,000 population, 1925–2014 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 24Execution 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 25Isaiah Berlin c.1983 (from Liberalism)
Image 26Gustave de Molinari (from Liberalism)
Image 27Monument to the liberals of the 19th century in Agra del Orzán neighborhood, La Coruña, Galicia (Spain) (from Liberalism)
Image 28Member nations of the International Monetary Fund (from Neoliberalism)
Image 29Builders in West Berlin, 1952 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 30T. 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 31Benjamin Constant, a Franco-Swiss political activist and theorist (from Liberalism)
Image 32GDP per capita in Chile and Latin America 1950–2010 (time under Pinochet highlighted) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 33Ronald Reagan (left) and Margaret Thatcher (right) popularized Neoliberalism. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 34The 2017–2018 Russian protests were organized by Russia's liberal opposition. (from Liberalism)
Image 35Ludwig Erhard (from Neoliberalism)
Image 36Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (from Liberalism)
Image 37John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) argued for the importance of freedom of speech. (from Liberalism)
Image 38Potrait of T. H. Green (from Liberalism)
Image 39John Rawls c.1970 (from Liberalism)
Image 40The iconic painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, a tableau of the July Revolution in 1830 (from Liberalism)
Image 41Montesquieu, who argued for the separation of the powers of government (from Liberalism)
Image 42The US federal minimum wage if it had kept pace with productivity compared to the actual wage. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 43Sismondi, who wrote the first critique of the free market from a liberal perspective in 1819 (from Liberalism)
Image 44The 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 45As 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 46Noam Chomsky's 1999 book Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order is an open critique of neoliberalism and the American economic structure. (from Neoliberalism)