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08-25-2011, 06:46 PM
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Classical Liberalism is not today's American "welfare liberalism".
"Classical liberalism is a philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets.
Classical liberalism developed in the 19th century in Europe, and the United States. Although classical liberalism built on ideas that had already developed by the end of the 18th century, it advocated a specific kind of society, government and public policy required as a result of the Industrial Revolution and urbanization. .......
...It drew on the economics of Adam Smith, a psychological understanding of individual liberty, natural law and utilitarianism, and a belief in progress. Classical liberals established political parties that were called "liberal", although in the United States classical liberalism came to dominate both existing major political parties. There was a revival of interest in classical liberalism in the 20th century led by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
Some call the late 19th century development of classical liberalism "neo-classical liberalism," which argued for government to be as small as possible in order to allow the exercise of individual freedom, while some refer to all liberalism before the 20th century as classical liberalism.[6] Libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism.[7]
The term classical liberalism was applied in retrospect to distinguish earlier 19th-century liberalism from the newer social liberalism. Some conservatives and right-libertarians use the term classical liberalism to describe their belief in the primacy of economic freedom and minimal government.
...Classical liberalism places a particular emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual, with private property rights being seen as essential to individual liberty. This forms the philosophical basis for laissez-faire public policy. According to Alan Ryan, the ideology of the original classical liberals argued against direct democracy, where law is made by majority vote by citizens, "for there is nothing in the bare idea of majority rule to show that majorities will always respect the rights of property or maintain rule of law.".........
.....According to Anthony Quinton, classical liberals believe that "an unfettered market" is the most efficient mechanism to satisfy human needs and channel resources to their most productive uses: they "are more suspicious than conservatives of all but the most minimal government." ........
.....Classical liberalism holds that individual rights are natural, inherent, or inalienable, and exist independently of government. Thomas Jefferson called these inalienable rights: "...rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law', because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." For classical liberalism, rights are of a negative nature—rights that require that other individuals (and governments) refrain from interfering with individual liberty, whereas social liberalism (also called modern liberalism or welfare liberalism) holds that individuals have a right to be provided with certain benefits or services by others.
Unlike social liberals, classical liberals are "hostile to the welfare state."[17] They do not have an interest in material equality but only in "equality before the law". Classical liberalism is critical of social liberalism and takes offense at group rights being pursued at the expense of individual rights."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
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