Posted on 08/15/2009 9:42:16 PM PDT by luckybogey
Liberalism’s classic formulation came in The Age of Enlightenment. John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government argued that legitimate authority depended on the consent of the governed, while Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations rejected mercantilism, which advocated state interventionism in the economy and protectionism, and developed modern free-market economics.
Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism, laissez-faire liberalism, and market liberalism or, outside Canada and the United States, sometimes simply liberalism is a form of liberalism stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government...
From the time of the industrial revolution through the Great Depression liberalism in America saw its first ideological challenges...In Europe, especially, except in the British Isles, liberalism had been fairly weak and unpopular relative to its opposition, like socialism, and therefore no change in meaning occurred.
As anyone paying attention will know, the Queen raised a question to England’s best and brightest economists last fall — Why didn’t economists predict the financial crisis? The urgency of her question is in the context of the claim that this is the worst financial crisis the western world has faced since the 1930s. Late in July, a response came from Tim Besley and Peter Hennessy and sent on behalf of the British Academy. The response does not focus on the policy errors made, but instead on a failure of “collective imagination”...
Recently Pope Benedict XVI issued a papal letter (“encyclical”) called “Caritas in Veritate” [CV] or “Charity in Truth” which is largely about economic issues relating to globalization. While there have been some commentaries on it, two prominent ones (here and here) in the Wall Street Journal do not reveal how truly bad it is. It may be that the pressures of journalism are such that people read such documents too quickly. I am being charitable...
(Excerpt) Read more at luckybogey.wordpress.com ...
I’ll put my money on the Father and the accumulated wisdom of the brightest minds history has known, thank you.
Father >> Holy Father, that is.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.