Liberalism, which began in the17th century, is the ideological weapon of the emerging class against the church and feudal privileges. The original meaning of "liberalism" here is generosity, which includes opposing oppression and persecution. There has been such a dominant political tradition since the founding of the United States, so liberalism is relatively pure and typical. Liberalism must include the following components:

Political freedom.

Because liberalism was born in the struggle with feudal autocracy, it first wanted to limit the royal power and the power of the government. Its theoretical basis is natural human rights. Everyone is born with basic human rights. These rights are not granted by the government, so the government cannot deprive them. In order to safeguard these rights, the people formed a government, so the government is to protect the people. Therefore, liberalism has great and high vigilance against the power of the government-firmly seeing that its legal rights are not violated.

Economic freedom.

Economic freedom includes property rights, free enterprise, free trade, free market and so on. Therefore, liberalism advocates reducing the control of the monarch or the government on the economy, and then allowing individuals to give full play to their talents under guaranteed conditions, that is, under the conditions guaranteed by law. Therefore, liberalism has a slogan, which is "opening the way for talents."

Personal freedom.

Personal freedom includes the right of expression, belief and privacy. In a word, liberalism is a set of ideas, political philosophy, political system and even lifestyle centered on freedom. It is a package, and this freedom is centered on individual freedom, which is the essence of very simple liberalism.

Two. Three main stages of the evolution of American liberalism.

The first is the establishment stage, which is divided into colonial period, founding period and civil war period. The middle stage is the revision stage, and the third stage is contemporary.

Establishment stage:

Regarding the establishment of American liberalism, we must first talk about his preparatory work, that is, the colonial period. Of course, the colonial period was not free, but it also contained the gene of freedom. Speaking of the colonial period, we should briefly talk about Puritanism-as we all know, after the Reformation, Protestantism split from Catholicism, and the Anglican Church became independent from the Roman Catholic Church, calling itself the Anglican Church. Soon, some people in the Anglican Church rebelled and became known as Puritans, which was the mainstay of the English revolution. But before the revolution, a group of Puritans completely despaired of Britain. They thought that Britain had fallen, so they crossed the Atlantic to North America and established their own city of God according to their own ideals. They arrived at the east coast and established theocracy with the integration of politics and religion. It is forced to believe in religion, and everything is based on the Bible. Of course, Puritanism is not liberalism. Freedom in the eyes of Puritans is only the freedom of sects. They believe in the pecking order, and anyone who wants to promote other religions in his territory will be driven away. They are truly obedient to God, so if heresy is blasphemy, they will not tolerate it. ?

Revision stage:

The first stage was relative laissez-faire, because the United States had not developed industry and economy at that time, so the disadvantages of liberalism had not yet been shown. However, in the 40 years after the Civil War, that is, in the last 40 years of the19th century, the American economy developed rapidly after removing the cancer of slavery. Industrialization has solved the problem of wealth production, but at the same time it has produced the problem of wealth distribution. This does not mean that wealth was distributed evenly before industrialization, but that there was not so much wealth in society before industrialization, and industrialization aggravated the problem of wealth distribution. Because wealth can't fall on everyone equally: due to the laws of industrialization and economic development, the scale of production will inevitably expand and capital will become more and more concentrated. Finally, a few chaebol were formed. Their capital is huge and no one in the world has ever seen it, so Americans are very afraid. For example, as we all know, the financier Morgan can put the whole country into economic panic by virtue of the strength of one company. During the short period of 65,438+05 from the turn of the century to the 20th century, the American President asked Morgan to help save the country three times: in 65,438+0893, Cleveland President asked Morgan to help maintain the national gold reserve, and in 65,438+0902, Roosevelt solved the coal mine strike. At this point, most people are panicked. So the disparity between the rich and the poor is a serious problem, but what Americans are more worried about is not this, but that these economic giants will change from manipulating the economy to manipulating the government, thus changing the democratic system in the United States.

Contemporary:

The 1960s was a period of political turmoil all over the world. The political turmoil in the 1960s in the United States included many movements, including the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the youth counterculture movement, the new leftist movement, the feminist movement, the campus confrontation, the Black Panthers Party and so on. At that time, the whole society was turbulent and full of confrontation. Until the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, the social endurance finally reached its limit. What is the result? It is a rebound, and society must be like this. The endurance of society is limited. Too much is too late, and it will inevitably rebound. Nixon, who was obviously conservative, was elected president. He won the support of the silent majority with the slogan of law and order, which shows that Americans are getting impatient with social unrest and have complained bitterly about political movements. In Nixon, after 30 years of left-leaning movement, it began to turn around in the late 1960 s, so there was no ups and downs in the 1960 s, and there would be no rebound of conservatism in the 1980 s. ?