During this holiday weekend it’s easier to let other people do the deep thinking and so courtesy of On The Borderline via Badger Blog Alliance I recommend The Rise, Decline and Reemergence of Classical Liberalism by Amy H. Sturgis © The LockeSmith Institute, 1994. This article in not exactly light summer reading but I do want to point out her distillation of multiple conceptual lines in the following brief set of principles. “In this context, classical liberalism includes the following:”
1. An ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society,There is a distinction between principles and values. As humans we each value a variety of issues including personal safety, freedom from thirst and hunger, health and long life, a desire for knowledge and wisdom and the ability to appreciate the beauty within the world. The ongoing evolution of our society is in fact an ongoing evaluation of the success of the principles behind our decisions.
2. The support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system,
3. The desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals' rights from others and from its own expansion, and
4. The universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions.
Personally I believe the above principles offer the best hope, over time, for the broadest dispersion of human well being, but I also understand the temptation for government power to impose quicker fixes for circumscribed populations. The task for Classical Liberalism is to continue to educate the global population while resisting the appeal of the imposed solution, the mandatory belief, the prohibited peaceful behavior, the tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of the powerful and the tyranny of the violent.
