Liberalism Link

Here is a pretty interesting article about Liberalism. Not liberalism like Democrats or PETA or whatever, but Liberalism like what you learn about in philosophy classes.

I remember being very confused when I started paying attention to politics near the end of college and hearing people saying that liberals were bad, because, well, it has a lot of different definitions, depending on where you are, who you are, and when you are, and the one that I knew (from reading J.S.Mill and John Rawls) was a very different one from what was the commonly understood definition in the ol' US of A.

Anyways, this article looks back on the last century and asks the question: since classical liberalism won just about every one of its battles over the last century, why aren't we all atheistic communists? Also, why are there still conservatives? It's very interesting and fairly apolitical, though written from the perspective of a liberal (but, again, not an American-style liberal).

Here is an interesting quote:

Nonetheless, [anti-democrats] are some of the few people we've met in our survey who can mount a substantial and consistent, if unattractive, case against liberalism. The usual [conservative] has to argue against liberal solutions on liberal grounds: e.g. affirmative action is bad because it doesn't treat all races equally; gays are really demanding "special rights". The antidemocrat can argue more directly: he doesn't believe in equality.

It's less interesting out of context, but it's near the end of a very long article, so just in case you don't make it through to the end, there it is. :)

Enjoy!