Liberty is a result of the minimization of coercion, both by government and private entities. The more coercion, the less Liberty.

“The utmost Liberty to the individual, and the fullest possible protection to him and his property, is both the limitation and the duty of government.”
U.S. Supreme Court, 1892

In the early phases of modern Europe, 17th century thinkers such as Descartes, Milton, and Spinoza, served as the conduits through which liberal thought came into European society. Descartes shaped the instrument of Rationalism, Spinoza established the link between Reason, and the values of the emerging liberal outlook, and Milton assaulted the repressive state and religious censorship, which prevented man from access to the truth.

Liberalism grew from these advances in knowledge and thought, which converged in the Age of Reason, producing great European voices like; Voltaire, Locke, Goethe, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Diderot, Lessing, Adam Smith, Vico, Condorcet, and Montesquieu. Their effect was to radically change the intellectual and cultural nature of society, and to challenge the feudal Monarchial, Aristocratic, and Clerical Institutions of the Old Order in Europe.

The golden age of Liberalism may be dated roughly between 1750 and 1914, the start of WWI. In its history as an ideology; Liberalism is closely linked with the idea of Liberty, and of Liberation, since the idea is to aim at freeing the individual from constraints on his mind and body, thereby expressing and fulfilling the human spirit. The concept of Liberty is central to the whole ideology of Liberalism; maximizing the individual’s freedom to think, to believe, to express and discuss his views, to organize (associate) in parties, to find employment, to buy and sell commodities (including his own labor) freely, and to keep the rewards, to choose his rulers as well as his form of government, and to change both by revolution if necessary.

“He who lets his world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the Ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.”
John Stuart Mill, (1806-1873) Liberal British Philosopher and Economist

Newton and the other early scientists of the Scientific Movement showed that the operation of the Universe could be explained rationally in terms of the laws of nature, without bringing in any external divine intervention. As a result God became Nature’s God, and religion was universalized into Deism, thus diluting the rigors of religious sectarian certitude, and emphasizing tolerance toward the forms in which Nature’s God might be worshiped.

Thomas Jefferson used the phrase “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence. Since man had rights in nature, governments must protect these rights, and the people must defend them, even against the government. The Bill of Rights, Petitions of Right, and Declarations of the Rights of Man, became the new commandments of the era.

Armed with the weapons of; logic, empirical systems of evidence, mathematical proofs, and dialectic reasoning; Liberalism gained wide acceptance in Europe and America. It was a basic assumption of the liberal thinkers; that man is endowed with reason and goodness, and that it is only the institutional frame into which he is born that corrupts and enslaves him. The enemy was; custom, tradition, institution, and social habit. The French philosopher Rousseau wrote that;

“Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau

The French philosophers, the English Utilitarians (the Greatest good for the greatest number), the Italian Patriot-Intellectuals were the angry young men of their time, blasting away at the establishment of their day; the Feudal Order, the Aristocratic Class, the Dynastic state, the religious controlled Educational system, and censorship. They all sought to lift from men, what Jefferson called “The Dead Hand of the Past.” The principles of Liberalism are widely recognized and followed in most western nations, with different forms of governments, including; Constitutional Monarchies with Parliamentary systems, and Representative Democracies, in which, those who have governmental authority, get and retain authority directly or indirectly as the result of winning free elections in which all adult citizens are allowed to participate.

These modern systems of government were heavily influenced by the 17th and 18th century ideology of Liberalism and it is reflected in the values contained in the Constitutions of Europe and the U.S. These values include; Popular Consent, Individualism, Equality of Opportunity, Personal Liberty, Free and Fair elections, Majority rule with protection of minorities, Freedom of expression, the right to assemble and protest, separation of powers, a system of checks and balances to constrain the national government’s power, and protection of personal civil and human rights and liberties.

U.S. Liberal-Democracy- Search For Liberty and Social Justice

American Liberal Democracy is the uniquely “American Experiment” in Liberal Democracy, a political ideology that has, throughout the past two hundred plus years, provided the American people with progress, freedom, prosperity, and social justice. It has lasted longer than any other Democracy, because it rests on the solid principles of Liberalism.

“The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of Executive power.”
Senator Daniel Webster, May 27, 1834

Liberty became the central theme of American Liberal Democracy. Liberty as the founders expressed it, was not simply the absence of external restraint on a person, it is the individual’s freedom to act positively to reach his or her goals.

The American system established by the founders, absorbed many of the extreme revolutionary movements which sought to overthrow the ruling classes by violence; as occurred in France and Russia, and provided a moderate approach to individual and community harmony in the modern world.

The obstacles that faced the development of Liberal Democracy in Europe were largely absent in the U.S. There was no Feudal Order to overthrow, no encrusted traditions, no entrenched landowning Aristocracy or Monarchy, and no oppressive burden of state sponsored clericalism. Once independence from the British Monarchy was accomplished, the U.S. became the best example of a Liberal-Democratic Republic that man had ever created. Liberalism flourished under the administrations of men like; Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.

For most of its history, the U.S. has struggled between the forces in society of Old World conservatism and New World liberalism.

“When the war of Independence came to an end and a new government had to be established, the nation was divided between two opinions. Those opinions were as old as the world itself and are found under different forms and with various names in all free societies. One party wanted to restrict popular power and the other to extend it indefinitely.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”

In the United States, the Democratic Party has traditionally been centrist and moderate, standing between the Conservatives on the right and the Socialists on the left. To be a moderate, means to intervene in disputes by opposing parties and help achieve some sort of consensus. Moderate or traditional-Republicans had occasionally broken with their party's platform on some issues (like abortion, for instance) and sided with Democrats, as some Democrats have sided with Republicans (on military funding, for example). Democrats who frequently side with Republicans are rarely called moderates; rather, they're often known as “conservative-Democrats.”

During these past 230 years, Liberal Democracy advocates have been responsible for all of the major advances in the liberties, rights, entitlements, and welfare of the American people, including; ending slavery, ending child labor, legalizing labor movements which have obtained safer working conditions and fair and livable wages for workers, suffrage for women, free public education, expanding civil and human rights, old age and survivor benefits of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a host of similar minimum requirements of a free and fair society.

In the 20th century, American Liberal-Democracy succeeded, under the difficult upheavals of the Industrial age, to carry out a program of democratic government and free market capitalism, as an alternative to the various forms of Totalitarianism including; Socialism and Communism on the left, and Conservatism and Fascism on the right.

“… and that is why this type of Democracy has become the instrument of that race, which in its inner goals, must shun the light of day now and in all ages of the future. Only a Jew can praise an institution which is as dirty and false as he himself.”
Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

By 1930, the Conservative Republican President Hoover’s America was lurching into an economic collapse of near-medieval proportions. From 1930 to 1933, national income dove from $81 Billion to $39 Billion. In 1932, 273,000 families were evicted from their homes. The hide bound conservative Hoover urged caution and only supported private relief efforts. Incapable of dealing with the crisis because of his ideology, he became the most hated man in America. In the last days of his presidency, thirteen million people were unemployed, one million roamed the country in railroad boxcars, food riots were breaking out, as relief stations ran out of cash, banks were closed or suspended in twenty-three states, and the New York Stock Exchange was shut down. The Conservative movement that had ruled the country for decades proved incapable of common sense solutions to the fundamental needs of governing in a crisis.

The period of the great depression, and the election of FDR and his “New Deal” policies, saw the greatest expansion of American Liberal-Democratic Social Justice, planting this ideology squarely in the middle of the political spectrum, between the extreme ideologies of the totalitarian dictatorships and defusing anarchist chaos.

Franklin Roosevelt’s Economic Bill of Rights:

“The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation
The right of every family to a decent home
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age,
sickness, accident and unemployment
And the right to a good education.”

Liberal-Democrats are “Progressive,” meaning they generally believe in the possibility of progress. They believe things can be made to work for the benefit of the people, that the future will be better, that obstacles can be overcome.

Liberals contend that the character of the modern capitalist economy; and the side effects of industrialization, technology, globalism, and corporate abuses, require government intervention and regulation of Corporate power. Liberal democrats have traditionally advocated programs to protect; minorities, the poor, the weak, the old, the worker, and the economically displaced, but Conservatives always advocate in the interest of the super-rich and the ruling class, and act on the maxim;

“Let the government take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor.”

Liberal democrats prefer that government take care of the weak, for the strong can always take care of themselves.

In the last 30 years of the 20th century, American Liberal-Democracy began to face its greatest challenge, from its historical opponent, the conservative anti-liberal reactionary radicalism of the right, which excludes any middle-ground in matters of domestic and foreign policy. This radicalism is as dangerous as the original threat from Fascism in the 1930s.

The wise fundamental liberal values of humanity, reason, and moderation are still valid. The American people deserve a form of government that will provide for a Peaceful Foreign Policy, adequate National Defense, minimum necessary Domestic Security, and Economic and Social Justice for all, in a free and fair society.

Survival of our system of government and our culture, will require a nationwide Political Revolution against Tyranny, and a Renaissance of the genuine values and principles of; Liberty, Freedom and Justice. We must return our country to an American Liberal Democratic Government that is actually of, by, and for the people. We don’t have to start from scratch, the ideological philosophy, is already contained in the history of western civilization, since the 17th Century. We just have to relearn its basic truths and defend them, against their age old enemies.