What is a liberal in politics definition
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Nearly two centuries after its invention, the label still denotes opprobrium in some quarters.
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The name became politicized in Great Britain and North America in the 1820s when the British Tories used it as a term of abuse to taunt the more progressive Whigs. In 1812 the Liberals, a middle-class movement opposed by nobles and clergy, succeeded in giving the Spanish nation a brief respite from absolutism by winning acceptance of a Constitution. By 1810 and for many years thereafter, "liberal" was a very positive word: in Emma, for example, the novelist Jane Austen writes that "the Coles had been settled in Highbury and were a good sort of people, friendly, liberal and unpretending." The first political connotation of "liberal" appeared in Spain. Locke's ideas justified England's Glorious Revolution of 1688 and animated the American revolutionaries of 1776.īy the early 19th century liberalism was on the march.
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If this contract is broken the people have the right to rebel. Governments come about only through the agreement of autonomous individuals that their rights are best protected by joint association. Locke was the first to argue that individuals have innate rights of life, liberty and property. The English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) holds pride of place among liberalism's thinkers. Long before the political label was coined in 19th-century Spain, liberalism existed as a body of thought dedicated to the proposition that the individual is the unit of supreme value in society.