classical liberals

Examples of classical liberals in the following topics:

• The Development of Sociology in the U.S.

  • As a political approach, Ward's system became known as "social liberalism," as distinguished from the classical liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries.
  • While classical liberalism (featuring such thinkers as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill) had sought prosperity and progress through laissez-faire policies, Ward's "American social liberalism" sought to enhance social progress through direct government intervention.
  • He has, in fact, been called "the father of the modern welfare state. " The liberalism of the Democrats today is not that of Smith and Mill, which stressed non-interference from the government in economic issues, but of Ward, which stressed the unique position of government to effect positive change.

• The Capitalist Critique of Socialism

  • Economic liberals, pro-capitalist libertarians, and some classical liberals view private enterprise, private ownership of the means of production, and the market exchange as central to conceptions of freedom and liberty.

• Socialism

  • In the West, neoclassical liberal economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman said that socialist planned economies would fail because planners could not have the business information inherent to a market economy (cf. economic calculation problem), nor could managers in Soviet-style socialist economies match the motivation of profit.
  • In the economic calculation debate, classical liberal Friedrich Hayek argued that a socialist command economy could not adequately transmit information about prices and productive quotas due to the lack of a price mechanism, and as a result it could not make rational economic decisions.

• The Spread of Liberal Democracy

  • Liberal democracy is a common form of representative democracy.
  • The possibility of democracy had not been seriously considered in political theory since classical antiquity, and the widely held belief was that democracies would be inherently unstable and chaotic in their policies due to the changing whims of the people.
  • Liberalism ceased to be a fringe opinion and joined the political mainstream.
  • By the end of the 19th century, liberal democracy was no longer only a liberal idea, but an idea supported by many different ideologies.
  • Defend the notion of liberal democracy using examples from its enlightenment origins

• Monarchies and Liberal Democracies

  • Monarchies, in which sovereignty embodied in a single individual, eventually gave way to liberal democracies.
  • Liberal democracy traces its origins, and its name, to the European 18th century, also known as the Age of Enlightenment.
  • Near the end of the 18th century, these ideas inspired the American and French Revolutions, the latter giving birth to the ideology of liberalism, and instituting forms of government that attempted to apply the principles of the Enlightenment philosophers into practice.
  • Reforms and revolutions helped move most European countries towards liberal democracy.
  • Liberalism ceased being a fringe opinion and joined the political mainstream.

• Participatory Democracy

  • Participatory democracy has been a feature of human society since at least classical times.
  • Some scholars argue for refocusing the term on community-based activity within the domain of civil society, based on the belief that a strong non-governmental public sphere is a precondition for the emergence of a strong liberal democracy.

• Terrorism

  • Some terrorist groups may see themselves as first and foremost fighting for liberation, a struggle so important that they argue it justifies unpalatable methods.
  • ETA is the main organization of the Basque National Liberation Movement and is the most important participant in the Basque conflict.
  • However, some groups, when involved in a liberation struggle, have been called terrorists by the Western governments or media.
  • In some liberation struggles, these same persons can become the leaders or statesman of these liberated nations .
  • The ETA is considered a terrorist organization by most governments, but proclaims its own mission to be liberation.

• Racism

  • Abstract Liberalism - using liberal language divorced from context and history to deny racism exists (e.g., all Americans are free now so they can be whatever they want)
  • While such films are arguably a world removed from more explicitly white supremacist classic films (see, for example, still highly celebrated classic films promoting explicit racism like The Birth of a Nation or Gone with the Wind), they echo these films by casting racial minorities as the "servants," "assistants," and "natural guides" for white victory and celebration.

• The Church-Sect Typology

  • The classical example of a church is the Roman Catholic Church, especially in the past.
  • Their motivation tends to be situated in accusations of apostasy or heresy in the parent denomination; they are often decrying liberal trends in denominational development and advocating a return to true religion.

• Economic Sociology

  • The field of economic sociology can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary period.
  • The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its phenomenological progeny, such as rationalization, secularization, urbanization, and social stratification.
  • Thus, many classical sociologists, from Émile Durkheim to Georg Simmel, include economic analyses in their texts.
  • Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is the archetypical representation of the works of economic sociology's classical period .
  • Examine the two periods of economic sociology - classical and contemporary - and the difference between economic sociology and socioeconomics