Liberalism: An Introduction

Liberalism is a term that is thrown around quite a lot these days. It is strongly affiliated with left-wing politics. Although, many of New Labour’s policies take more of a traditional right-wing stance and many policies from the New Right (Conservative party) take a neo-liberal form. It’s so strange that traditional liberal and conservative political parties no longer solely hold onto traditional liberal and conservative views, respectively. However, this is largely due to changing times and circumstances where we need to take a fresh look at social issues.

Liberal thinking was hugely popular during the Enlightenment period, where many philosophers and writes wrote of revolution and held deeply liberal views. For example, Thomas Paine was hugely influenced by Enlightenment thinkers and his writing was rather liberal.

Below, I am going to list a few ideas and concepts central to liberalism. However, this is not an exhaustive list and many other ideas and notions are often wrote about by liberalist thinkers. Having said that, it is hard to find liberal ideas true to all liberal thinkers and activists.

Here are a few ideas central to liberalism:

• Everyone should be free to think and live how they chose to: We shouldn’t be forced to live a certain way. We all have our own views and opinions and we should be free to express them
• Everybody has the same rights: Everyone in society has the same rights regardless of their class or profession. An owner of a transnational corporation should have just as much say as low-income refuse collector.
• We are all unified by our species: Being human is something that we all share. This is something that unites us, allows us to connect and gives us a sense of togetherness.
• Everybody has a say on issues that affect them: We should all have a say on issues that will effect us. We should all have an equal say in deciding about things that will effect us in society.

There are many other ideas and views held by liberalists as I previously mentioned but these are some of the main ones.

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