Who is liberal

I try to realize that we are not all made alike … " — Willa Cather , O Pioneers! Besides, having a liberal nature, he was generally ready to treat his companions.

He made a very liberal donation to the museum. Noun a policy that is supported both by liberals and conservatives in Congress. Recent Examples on the Web: Adjective But ultimately, passage came not because of Republican backing but because liberal Democrats decided to trust balking centrists to eventually come to their side. Senate announced legislation to tax the oil industry on the basis of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Wayne Carter Jr. First Known Use of liberal Adjective 14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2a Noun , in the meaning defined above. Learn More About liberal. Time Traveler for liberal The first known use of liberal was in the 14th century See more words from the same century.

From the Editors at Merriam-Webster. What Exactly Is a 'Liberal'? No one wants a 'servile arts' degree. Phrases Related to liberal Liberal Democrat. Style: MLA. English Language Learners Definition of liberal Entry 1 of 2. We borrowed liberal arts from French in the 14th century, and sometime after this liberal began to be used in conjunction with other words such as education , profession , and pastime. When paired with these other words liberal was serving to indicate that the things described were fitting for a person of high social status.

The word's meaning kept shifting. Liberal is commonly used as a label for political parties in a number of other countries, although the positions these parties take do not always correspond to the sense of liberal that people in the United States commonly give it. In the US, the word has been associated with both the Republican and Democratic parties now it is more commonly attached to the latter , although generally it has been in a descriptive, rather than a titular , sense.

The word has—for some people, at least—taken on some negative connotations when used in a political sense in the United States. It is still embraced with pride by others. We can see these associations with the word traced back to the early and midth century in its combination with other words, such as pinko :. Thanks to The Dove, pinko-liberal journal of campus opinion at the University of Kansas, a small part of the world last week learned some inner workings of a Japanese college boy.

Pinko liberals—the kind who have been so sympathetic with communistic ideals down through the years—will howl to high heaven.

But it seems to us too bourgeois. As with individuals, liberals may think that peoples or groups have freedom to make mistakes in managing their collective affairs. Thus rather than proposing a doctrine of intervention many liberals propose various principles of toleration which specify to what extent liberals must tolerate non-liberal peoples and cultures. Chandran Kukathas — whose liberalism derives from the classical tradition — is inclined to almost complete toleration of non-liberal peoples, with the non-trivial proviso that there must be exit rights.

The status of non-liberal groups within liberal societies has increasingly become a subject of debate, especially with respect to some citizens of faith.

We should distinguish two questions: i to what extent should non-liberal cultural and religious communities be exempt from the requirements of the liberal state? Turning to i , liberalism has a long history of seeking to accommodate religious groups that have deep objections to certain public policies, such as the Quakers, Mennonites or Sikhs.

The most difficult issues in this regard arise in relation to children and education see Galston, ; Fowler, ; Andersson, Mill, for example, writes:. Over the last thirty years, there has been a particular case that is at the core of this debate — Wisconsin vs.

Yoder : [ U. In this case, the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of Amish parents to avoid compulsory schooling laws and remove their children from school at the age of 14 — thus, according to the Amish, avoiding secular influences that might undermine the traditional Amish way of life. Because cultural and religious communities raise and educate children, they cannot be seen as purely voluntary opt-outs from the liberal state: they exercise coercive power over children, and so basic liberal principles about protecting the innocent from unjustified coercion come into play.

Other liberal theorists, on the other hand, have argued that the state should not intervene because it might undermine the inculcation of certain values that are necessary for the continued existence of certain comprehensive doctrines Galston, p.

Moreover, some such as Harry Brighouse have argued that the inculcation of liberal values through compulsory education might undermine the legitimacy of liberal states because children would not due to possible indoctrination be free to consent to such institutions. But many friends of religion e. Again liberals diverge in their responses. Thus Rawls allows the legitimacy of religious-based arguments against slavery and in favor of the United States civil rights movement, because ultimately such arguments were supported by public reasons.

Others e. Thus, citizens of faith would be able to preserve their religious integrity, all the while remaining unable to coerce others via unshared religious reasons. It is not, though, an unimportant or trivial thing that all these theories take liberty to be the grounding political value.

Radical democrats assert the overriding value of equality, communitarians maintain that the demands of belongingness trump freedom, and conservatives complain that the liberal devotion to freedom undermines traditional values and virtues and so social order itself.

Intramural disputes aside, liberals join in rejecting these conceptions of political right. Berlin, Isaiah Bosanquet, Bernard communitarianism conservatism contractarianism contractualism cosmopolitanism Enlightenment Green, Thomas Hill Hobbes, Thomas: moral and political philosophy justice: distributive justice: international distributive justification, political: public Kant, Immanuel: social and political philosophy legitimacy, political libertarianism liberty: positive and negative Locke, John: political philosophy markets Mill, John Stuart: moral and political philosophy multiculturalism perfectionism, in moral and political philosophy property and ownership public reason Rawls, John religion and political theory republicanism Rousseau, Jean Jacques toleration.

The Debate About Liberty 1. The Debate About the Comprehensiveness of Liberalism 3. Isaiah Berlin famously advocated a negative conception of liberty: I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity.

Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved.

Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind…it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced.

Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act. You lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining a goal by other human beings Berlin, According to Philip Pettit, The contrary of the liber , or free, person in Roman, republican usage was the servus , or slave, and up to at least the beginning of the last century, the dominant connotation of freedom, emphasized in the long republican tradition, was not having to live in servitude to another: not being subject to the arbitrary power of another.

Pettit, On this view, the opposite of freedom is domination. Mill, , vol. Hence it was, I think, that the Philosophers of old did in vain enquire, whether the Summum bonum consisted in Riches, or bodily Delights, or Virtue, or Contemplation: And they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best Relish were to be found in Apples, Plumbs or Nuts; and have divided themselves into Sects upon it. For…pleasant Tastes depend not on the things themselves, but their agreeableness to this or that particulare Palate, wherein there is great variety… []: The most difficult issues in this regard arise in relation to children and education see Galston, ; Fowler, ; Andersson, Mill, for example, writes: Consider … the case of education.

Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth? Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of the parents or, as law and usage now stand, the father , after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards others and towards himself ….

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