Revolutions in Europe and North America - Liberalism

REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA HIST 1301 | History Liberalism Similar to nationalism, liberalism is a political theory that emerged from the eighteenthcentury revolutionary upheavals and is based on Enlightenment ideas. Freedom from restraint—more especially, freedom of expression, popular sovereignty, representative governance, and the defence of private property and civil rights—is its fundamental objective. Nonetheless, the liberalism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries differs from that of the nineteenth century. The term's meaning has evolved over time, and while liberals in the United States of the nineteenth century were opposed to government intervention, liberals in the twenty-first century typically support government intervention to ensure equality and aid the impoverished. Nationalism and liberalism are not incompatible; nationalist leaders such as Mazzini embraced several liberal ideas. However, the writings of Enlightenment intellectuals like John Locke and Adam Smith led to the development of a divide between political and economic liberalism. Political liberalism supports limited government and the freedom to reject any political power that does not have the permission of the people since it is based on Locke's focus on the consent of the governed and the inherent rights of life, liberty, and property. Limiting the power of the government and securing rights for all individuals in a written constitution are two ways to achieve these aims. In the eighteenth century, religious toleration and the separation of church and state also emerged as essential tenets of liberalism. All had a major influence on the revolutionary movements that led to the issuance of written constitutions recognising popular sovereignty in Haiti, France, and Britain's colonies in North America. Tested by several revolutions, Enlightenment concepts of natural rights evolved into a robust commitment to equality before the law and consent of the governed in nineteenth-century liberal political ideologies. The English philosopher John Stuart Mill was one of the most well-known liberals of the nineteenth century. He advocated that individual rights should be shielded against oppression and censorship. His seminal work On Liberty, which was released in 1859, highlighted the value of tolerance and the possibility of many moral codes coexisting together in a particular community. According to Mill, individuals ought to have the liberty to make moral decisions on their personal lives without interference or hindrance from the government. In addition to being a strong proponent of equality, he was also a significant figure in the nineteenth-century women's rights movement because to his article On the Subjection of Women. While Mill and Locke concentrated liberalism on equality and natural rights, Scottish economist Adam Smith's Enlightenment ideas served as the basis for economic liberalism. Smith, whose ideas helped to define the era's booming capitalism, promoted the laissez-faire philosophy, which holds that the government should stay out of economic matters. He claimed that self-interested participation in a free market would be governed by invisible forces—a "invisible hand"—in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, and that any kind of government intervention would only cause disruption. Smith argued that if people were free to pursue financial success without interference from the government, everyone would gain from the increased wealth that would result. As with Mill and Locke, Smith's laissez-faire philosophy was largely concerned with economic issues, but he also supported the protection of natural rights and the absence of governmental interference as fundamental elements of effective governance.