Transcription
What is a classical liberal? It sounds like someone who's a liberal, but perhaps a bit fancier. Maybe sporting a top hat, a twirly mustache, and a monocle. Tea time? Well, that might be true in some specific cases. There's a lot more to it than that, and I bet I can convince you that there's a little classical liberal in you too, in about two minutes.
Classical liberalism is the idea that individual freedom and limited government are the best way for humans to form a free society. The classical liberal tradition was born from great thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Jefferson. While they all tinkered in their own way with the ideas of classical liberalism, the core belief that the individual should always be considered above the gloom always remained constant. Thomas Jefferson even threw in the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence to drive home the point that your happiness wasn't the government's to give, but rather yours to take.
Putting the individual above the group not only empowers you to live your life as you see fit, but it also neutralizes the forces of racism and bigotry, which judge people not on their individuality, but on their immutable characteristics, be it color of skin, gender, or sexuality. These days, liberalism has been confused with leftism or progressivism, which actually has nothing to do with classical liberalism. Sadly, the left is no longer liberal at all, for it has created in individualism for collectivism, thus placing us in an oppression Olympics where victimhood is virtue. This post-modernism, this cultural Marxism, or whatever you want to call it, can only destroy; it cannot create. If you bucked the trend and dare succeed as a member of one of these supposed oppressed minorities, you must be tossed aside because your success is confirmation of the failure of this worldview. This is what the left is offering, and that's not classically liberal; it's radically a-liberal.
So, it doesn't matter if you're a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, or an independent. It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or an atheist, a man or a woman, or black or white. What matters is whether you wish to live as a free person in a free society, based on your own ideas and actions. I suspect that you do, and if I'm right, there's already a little classical liberal in you right now.
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