Liberalism  

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Illustration:Liberty Leading the People (1831, detail) by Eugène Delacroix.

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Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas such as free and fair elections, civil rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free trade, and private property.

Liberalism first became a distinct political movement during the Age of Enlightenment, when it became popular among philosophers and economists in the Western world. Liberalism rejected the notions, common at the time, of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The 17th century philosopher John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition. Locke argued that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property and according to the social contract, governments must not violate these rights. Liberals opposed traditional conservatism and sought to replace absolutism in government with representative democracy and the rule of law.

The revolutionaries of the Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, segments of the French Revolution, and other liberal revolutionaries from that time used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of what they saw as tyrannical rule. The nineteenth century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, Spanish America, and North America. In this period, the dominant ideological opponent of liberalism was classical conservatism.

Etymology and definition

Words such as liberal, liberty, libertarian, and libertine all trace their history to the Latin liber, which means "free".<ref name="Gross, p. 5">Gross, p. 5.</ref> One of the first recorded instances of the word liberal occurs in 1375, when it was used to describe the liberal arts in the context of an education desirable for a free-born man.<ref name="Gross, p. 5"/> The word's early connection with the classical education of a medieval university soon gave way to a proliferation of different denotations and connotations. Liberal could refer to "free in bestowing" as early as 1387, "made without stint" in 1433, "freely permitted" in 1530, and "free from restraint"—often as a pejorative remark—in the 16th and the 17th centuries.<ref name="Gross, p. 5"/>

In 16th century England, liberal could have positive or negative attributes in referring to someone's generosity or indiscretion.<ref name="Gross, p. 5"/> In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare wrote of "a liberal villaine" who "hath...confest his vile encounters".<ref name="Gross, p. 5"/> With the rise of the Enlightenment, the word acquired decisively more positive undertones, being defined as "free from narrow prejudice" in 1781 and "free from bigotry" in 1823.<ref name="Gross, p. 5"/> In 1815, the first use of the word liberalism appeared in English.<ref>Kirchner, pp. 2–3.</ref> By the middle of the 19th century, liberal started to be used as a politicised term for parties and movements all over the world.<ref>Emil J. Kirchner, Liberal Parties in Western Europe, "Liberal parties were among the first political parties to form, and their long-serving and influential records, as participants in parliaments and governments, raise important questions ... ", Cambridge University Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0521323949</ref>

See also

• European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party is the European umbrella organisation for liberal parties.
• Friedrich Naumann Foundation is a global advocacy organisation that supports liberal ideas and policies.
• Muscular liberalism
• Rule according to higher law
• The American Prospect is an American political magazine that backs social liberal policies.
• The Liberal is a British magazine dedicated to coverage of liberal politics and liberal culture.
• Constitutional liberalism