In modern society, liberals support liberal democracy based on harmony or constitutional monarchy, and have an open and fair electoral system, so that all citizens have equal rights to participate in government affairs. Liberalism opposed many early mainstream political structures, such as divine right of monarchy, hereditary system and state religion system. The basic human rights of liberalism are the right to life, freedom and property.
In many countries, "modern" liberals broke away from the original classical liberalism and advocated that the government provide the people with the minimum material welfare by extracting taxes. Liberalism is rooted in the Enlightenment, and now the word liberalism has contained many different political thoughts. From the left to the right, the political spectrum of supporters is quite extensive.
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First, modern liberalism.
In the post-war liberalism, modern liberalism began to occupy a dominant position. Modern liberalism connects the concepts of modernism and progressivism, and advocates that ensuring people have enough economic and educational property is the best way to counter the threat of totalitarianism.
Liberals in this period advocated the maximization and self-realization of individual freedom through the inspiration of liberal system. Liberal writers in this period include economist John Galbraith, philosopher john rawls and sociologist Ralph dahrendorf.
It was also during this period that a school that insisted that the government should not interfere in the economy or it would betray the principle of freedom came into being, calling itself libertarianism. This movement is centered on the thoughts of the Austrian school.
Another important debate of liberalism lies in whether people who are members of the same society have positive freedom and have the right to ask the same society to protect others' wrong behavior. For many liberals, the answer is yes: as a member of a country, region and politics, individuals have positive freedom and have the right to expect benefits and protection from these people. * * * Members of the same institution have the right to ask their institutions to establish some degree of control over the economy, so as to prevent the rise and fall of the economy from being manipulated by some individuals.
And if individuals have the right to participate in public office, they also have the right to ask the society for education and protection-that is, the right not to be discriminated against by others. The answer of other liberals is no: individuals have no right to be members of the same community because such rights will conflict with the basic "negative" rights of other community members.
/kloc-after the 1970s, the pendulum of liberalism began to shift away from emphasizing the role of the government and instead emphasized the principles of free market and laissez-faire. In essence, many liberal ideas before World War I began to recover.
Part of the reason for this change comes from the confidence that the liberal form will win at that time, but it also comes from the foundation of liberal philosophy, especially the tradition of being skeptical about the country, whether economically or politically. Even the liberal system may be abused to restrict freedom rather than promote it.
With milton friedman in the United States and Austrian School in Europe, the emphasis on the free market has gradually increased. They think that the government's control and intervention in the economy is a rather unstable slope, which will lead to more and more interventions under any circumstances, and more and more interventions are becoming more and more difficult to remove.
Second, the influence of liberalism on the world.
Liberalism has a far-reaching influence on the modern world. Personal freedom, personal dignity, freedom of speech, religious tolerance, personal property, universal human rights, government transparency, restriction of government power, people's sovereignty, national self-determination, privacy, enlightened and rational policies and regulations, basic equality, free market economy and free trade are all basic concepts of liberalism in the past 250 years.
Liberal democracy is a typical multi-party and multi-political form. Today, some countries have accepted these liberal concepts as their policy objectives, although they are often very different in statement and reality. These concepts are not only the goals of liberalism, but also the goals of social democracy, conservatism and Christian democracy.