Social liberalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social liberalism (also new liberalism,^{[1] [2]}, radical liberalism^[3] or sometimes modern liberalism^[4]) is a development of liberalism stemming from the late 19th century. It has been a label used by progressive liberal parties in order to differentiate themselves from classical liberal parties, especially when there are two or more liberal parties in a country. Unlike classical liberalism which embraces a strictly laissez-faire philosophy, social liberalism sees a role for the State in providing positive liberty for individuals.

Social liberalism is a political philosophy that emphasizes mutual collaboration through liberal institutions. Social liberalism, as a branch of liberalism, contends that society must protect liberty and opportunity for all citizens. In the process, it accepts some restrictions in economic affairs, such as anti-trust laws to combat economic oligopolies, regulatory bodies or minimum wage laws, intending to secure economic opportunities for all. It also expects legitimate governments to provide a basic level of welfare or workfare, health and education, supported by taxation, intended to enable the best use of the talents of the population, prevent revolution, or simply for the perceived public good.

Question: if it protects the opportunity of all citizens, why are liberals not interested in protecting liberty and opportunity for the unborn child? Why are they not protecting the opportunity for the deserving students? Why do they only see separation of church-from-government and not government-from-church? they try to regulate religious practices quite frequently (I'm more than willing to expound if you would like examples).

Rejecting both the most extreme forms of capitalism and the revolutionary elements from the socialist school, social liberalism emphasizes what it calls "positive liberty", seeking to enhance the "positive freedoms" of the poor and disadvantaged in society by means of government regulation.

Usually this interferes with my own pursuit of happiness and opportunities. Why are they dictacting what I will do to help the poor and underprivileged? I believe in helping the poor, but being forced to through government regulations sounds a little hypocritical to me. Can altruism exist in a nation that taxes the crap out of its citizens, where free-loaders abound, or in a nation that a minority might take my job (because he or she deserves the opportunity more than I do)? Now, before I sound so heartless......it is society's responsibility to take care of each other. We can do so by leading our"horses" to water by providing opportunites with education and creating more jobs. The bottle-fed "horse" will never stretch his neck to drink from the pond. Drinking from the pond is more rewarding anyways.

Like all liberals, social liberals believe in individual freedom as a central objective. However, they are unique in comparison to other liberals in that they believe that lack of economic opportunity, education, health-care, and so on can be considered to be threats to their conception of liberty.^[2] Social liberals are outspoken defenders of their idea of "human rights" and "civil liberties", and combine this with support for a mixed economy, with a state providing public services.

The day I stop seeing military recruiters harassed on college campuses, religious freedoms impinged, and freedom of speech only available to minorities, I will believe that liberals are truly liberals.

The paragraphs in bold were inserted by James McCann, the rest of the material is from Wikipedia.