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 Prince of Orange landing at Torbay
as depicted in an illustration by Jan Hoynck van Papendrecht

The Glorious Revolution is the sequence of events that led to the deposition of James II and VII in November 1688. He was replaced by his daughter Mary II and her Dutch husband, William III of Orange, who was also his nephew. The two ruled as joint monarchs of England, Scotland, and Ireland until Mary's death in 1694. The Revolution itself was relatively bloodless, but pro-Stuart revolts between 1689 and 1746 caused significant casualties, while the political movement known as Jacobitism persisted into the late 18th century. William's invasion was the last successful invasion of England.

Despite his own Catholicism, for various reasons James became king in February 1685 with widespread backing from the Protestant majorities in England and Scotland, as well as largely Catholic Ireland. Although his policies quickly eroded this support, it was not until June 1688 that dissatisfaction became a political crisis. The birth of James Francis Edward on 10 June displaced his Protestant elder sister Mary as the heir presumptive. The prospect of a Catholic dynasty destroyed James's political authority, and led a few of his domestic opponents to seek external support in removing him. (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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The ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer-deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realized that it is not.

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— Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958.

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General images

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

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