What does "liberal" mean?

A couple of centuries of alternatives...

• The word “liberal” is from Latin libere = “free”

• Now it’s likely that, reading the word “free,” you thought of “being free FROM” restrictions of some sort; that is, “free” in ordinary American usage usually has this negative meaning: “not being subject to”, or “not being restricted”

• All of the freedoms outlined in the “Bill of Rights” for example—the original 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution of 1776—are negative in this sense: there shall be no restrictions on “assembly,” and “speech,” no violations of “my home,” and so on…

• So “freedom” for Americans has been understood, since the founding of the republic, to be leaving people alone

• Historically, of course, the British colonies that we were aimed to break away from British rule; most of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is a list of the violations perpetrated by the British “crown” on the people of the colonies

• So “independence” in American terms originally meant being free from…

• The political labels “liberal” & “conservative” originated in the late 18th c. when the French revolution [1789] —in conscious imitation of the American revolution [1776], began with overthrowing the monarchy (including actually executing the king)

• The reaction among some British thinkers [cf. Edmund Burke, the prime example…] was to argue for conserving the stabilizing character of royal succession (as the British had done in the 17th c.)

• Americans, in contrast, were generally in favor of the revolution, understood as the French freeing themselves from monarchy; Americans, that is, were politically liberal

• By the beginning of the 19th c. the industrial revolution was well advanced: that is, human work had been revolutionized: instead of people using their hands & animal muscle to grow & to make things, people were working to build & maintain machines that were making things

• The industrial revolution had begun in England with the development of steam engines & mechanical looms [for making fabrics]

• The mechanical loom vastly increased the demand for cotton, and American land (in the process then of being stolen from the native people who lived upon it) was ideal for growing this crop

• Cotton is a crop that requires enormous labor, and no machines (yet) existed to reduce the demand…

• So the “slave trade”—the capture & transport of African people—expanded enormously to provide for the production of cotton to send to mills in England & the northern states of the U.S.

• The defense of this business was the original aim of “liberal politics:” the defense, that is, of capitalism: the organization of society around the the principle of profit

• An 18th c. French phrase—laissez faire—meaning: “to leave it free”—came to describe the policy of leaving business free of government regulation; thus liberal politics were synonymous in the 19th c. with business friendly or economic liberalism

• With the development of manufacture of goods paid- or wage-labor became the new form of life in 19th c. England, then the U.S., then western Europe

• By the 1860s “wage earners” were organizing to force business (by this time also conglomerating into “corporations”) to institute an 8ht workday and to pay a “living wage;” this labor movement led to the emergence of political or social liberalism: emphasizing fair labor practice, social equality, and civil liberties

• While “economic liberalism” is still common, “liberal” is now almost entirely used to mean “political liberalism” concerned with protecting civil liberties (such as voting rights), social justice, equality & diversity, minority rights, and tolerance of varied “lifestyles”

• So it should be clear that much of the current “political division” in the U.S. is the current stage of a procession of social changes unfolding for over a century now

• A newly-prominent feature of this process are disputes over how history should be taught

• Indeed, the history I have just sketched illustrates the basis for such dispute: how we “read” the meaning of our own past can reveal our “needs” more dramatically than many can tolerate…