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Why Liberalism Failed is a critique of political, social, and economic liberalism as practiced by both American Democrats and Republicans.According to Deneen, "we should rightly wonder whether America is not in the early days of its eternal life but rather approaching the end of the natural cycle of corruption and decay that limits the lifespan of all human creations."
Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central concept in history and political thought and one of the most important features of democratic societies. [1]
Liberals generally believed in limited government, although several liberal philosophers decried government outright, with Thomas Paine writing, "government even in its best state is a necessary evil".
In the United States, classical liberalism, also called laissez-faire liberalism, [92] is the belief that a free-market economy is the most productive and government interference favors a few and hurts the many [original research?] —or as Henry David Thoreau stated, "that government is best which governs least". Classical liberalism is a ...
Liberalism became a distinct movement in the Age of Enlightenment, gaining popularity among Western philosophers and economists. Liberalism sought to replace the norms of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings and traditional conservatism with representative democracy, rule of law, and equality under ...
In Europe, liberalism usually means what is sometimes called classical liberalism, a commitment to limited government, laissez-faire economics. This classical liberalism sometimes more closely corresponds to the American definition of libertarianism, although some distinguish between classical liberalism and libertarianism. [41]
To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. A liberal democracy may take various and mixed constitutional forms: it may be a constitutional monarchy or a republic.
Liberalism is one of the main schools of international relations theory. Liberalism comes from the Latin liber meaning "free", referring originally to the philosophy of freedom. [5] Its roots lie in the broader liberal thought originating in the Enlightenment. The central issues that it seeks to address are the problems of achieving lasting ...