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Brooke Johnson. Political Ideologies . Essay 1. 2/24/17.

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Brooke Johnson
Political Ideologies
Essay 1
2/24/17
Differing Perspectives of Liberalism Liberalism is characterized by a commitment to individual rights, toleration, limited government, equal opportunity, and a commitment to free market. There are different forms of liberalism that one may identify with, such as classical liberalism, neo-liberalism, egalitarianism, and libertarianism. Each of these forms have different consequences or interpretations of some of the characteristics of liberalism. Two really key components of liberalism shared among the subcategories are liberty and rule of law. Even though liberals share a broad set of values and preferences, one crucial site of disagreement is over how to best conceive …show more content…

According to Terence Ball in Ideals and Ideologies, “Liberals see themselves as champions of individual liberty who work to create or preserve an open and tolerant society- a society whose members are free to pursue their own ideas and interests with as little interference as possible” (65). Some of the most important ideologists, such as Immanuel Kant, Thomas Paine, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes are considered liberalists, as they too believed in eliminated injustices. According to Dr Edwin van de Haar, who specializes in the liberal tradition, there are three different approaches that these liberalists take to the involvement of the state when analyzing liberalist liberty, which include: the state should be completely hands off, the state should have limited involvement, or the state should have a fairly large involvement (The Meaning of Liberalism, 2015). While believers of negative liberty feel that there should be a freedom from the interference of the government, on the other hand supporters of positive liberty believe that liberty is the freedom to fully enjoy one’s rights and available opportunities through necessary resources. One main difference between the negative and positive view of liberty is that positive liberty usually requires more support from the government. As stated by Ball, in Thomas Paines’ Common Sense, he supported this aspiration for limited government when he wrote “Society in every state is a blessing, but

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