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. Different liberals espouse various and sometimes conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support liberal democracy, private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), 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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Demonstration by the Social Democratic Party of Austria on International Workers' Day, 2012

Social democracy is a broad, centre-left to left-wing social, economic, and political ideology within the wider socialist movement that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, social democracy has taken the form of a predominantly capitalist, yet robust welfare state, with policies promoting social justice, market regulation, and a more equitable distribution of income.^[1]

Social democracy maintains a commitment to representative and participatory democracy. Common aims include curbing inequality, eliminating the oppression of underprivileged groups, eradicating poverty, and upholding universally accessible public services such as child care, education, elderly care, health care, and workers' compensation. Economically, it supports income redistribution and regulating the economy in the public interest. (Full article...)

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Rawls in 1971

John Bordley Rawls (/rɔːlz/; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the modern liberal tradition. Rawls has been described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century.

In 1990, Will Kymlicka wrote in his introduction to the field that "it is generally accepted that the recent rebirth of normative political philosophy began with the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971". Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society in any case where inequalities may occur. Rawls's argument for these principles of social justice uses a thought experiment called the "original position", in which people deliberately select what kind of society they would choose to live in if they did not know which social position they would personally occupy. In his later work Political Liberalism (1993), John Rawls addressed the question of how political power can be exercised legitimately in a society where citizens hold diverse and often conflicting moral, religious, and philosophical points of view. (Full article...)

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General images

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

Image 1Madame de Staël (from Liberalism)
Image 2United States incarceration rate per 100,000 population, 1925–2014 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 3Monument to the liberals of the 19th century in Agra del Orzán neighborhood, La Coruña, Galicia (Spain) (from Liberalism)
Image 4Wealth inequality in the United States increased from 1989 to 2013. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 5Julius Faucher (from Liberalism)
Image 6Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the pioneer of liberal feminism (from Liberalism)
Image 7U.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 8The 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 9The 2017–2018 Russian protests were organized by Russia's liberal opposition. (from Liberalism)
Image 10Execution 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 11Unemployment in Chile and South America (1980–1990) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 12John Milton's Areopagitica (1644) argued for the importance of freedom of speech. (from Liberalism)
Image 13GDP per capita in Chile and Latin America 1950–2010 (time under Pinochet highlighted) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 14Friedrich Hayek (from Neoliberalism)
Image 15The US federal minimum wage if it had kept pace with productivity compared to the actual wage (from Neoliberalism)
Image 16Raif 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 17Member nations of the International Monetary Fund (from Neoliberalism)
Image 18T. 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 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 20Ronald Reagan (left) and Margaret Thatcher (right) were responsible for the popularisation of Neoliberalism. (from Neoliberalism)
Image 21As 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 22John Stuart Mill, whose On Liberty greatly influenced 19th-century liberalism (from Liberalism)
Image 23Ludwig Erhard (from Neoliberalism)
Image 24Builders in West Berlin, 1952 (from Neoliberalism)
Image 25The iconic painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, a tableau of the July Revolution in 1830 (from Liberalism)
Image 26John 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 27Benjamin Constant, a Franco-Swiss political activist and theorist (from Liberalism)
Image 28Franklin D. Roosevelt (from Liberalism)
Image 29Pamphlet calling for a protest of economic policy in 1983 following the economic crisis (from Neoliberalism)
Image 30Gustave de Molinari (from Liberalism)
Image 31The 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 32Sismondi, who wrote the first critique of the free market from a liberal perspective in 1819 (from Liberalism)
Image 33Chilean (orange) and average Latin American (blue) rates of growth of GDP (1971–2007) (from Neoliberalism)
Image 34Montesquieu, who argued for the separation of the powers of government (from Liberalism)
Image 35Per capita income during the Great Depression (from Neoliberalism)