Portal:Liberalism

Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism, or right-wing libertarianism, is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a type of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to property and income. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, the non-aggression principle, and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.

Right-libertarian political thought is characterized by the strict priority given to liberty, with the need to maximize the realm of individual freedom and minimize the scope of public authority. Right-libertarians typically see the state as the principal threat to liberty. This anti-statism differs from anarchist doctrines in that it is based upon strong individualism that places less emphasis on human sociability or cooperation. Right-libertarian philosophy is also rooted in the ideas of individual rights and laissez-faire economics. The right-libertarian theory of individual rights generally follows the homestead principle and the labor theory of property, stressing self-ownership and that people have an absolute right to the property that their labor produces. Economically, right-libertarians make no distinction between capitalism and free markets and view any attempt to dictate the market process as counterproductive, emphasizing the mechanisms and self-regulating nature of the market whilst portraying government intervention and attempts to redistribute wealth as invariably unnecessary and counter-productive. Although all right-libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between anarcho-capitalists, who view the state as an unnecessary evil and want property rights protected without statutory law through market-generated tort, contract and property law; and minarchists, who support the need for a minimal state, often referred to as a night-watchman state, to provide its citizens with courts, military, and police. (Full article...)

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, OM, KStJ, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal politician from Wales, he was known for leading the United Kingdom during the First World War, for social-reform policies (including the National Insurance Act 1911), for his role in the Paris Peace Conference, and for negotiating the establishment of the Irish Free State. He was the last Liberal prime minister; the party fell into third-party status during the last years of his premiership.

Young Lloyd George gained a reputation as an orator and a proponent of a Welsh blend of radical Liberal ideas, which included support for Welsh devolution, for the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, for equality for labourers and tenant farmers, and for reform of land ownership. In 1890 he narrowly won a by-election to become the Member of Parliament for Caernarvon Boroughs, in which seat he remained for 55 years. He served in Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet from 1905. After H. H. Asquith succeeded to the premiership in 1908, Lloyd George replaced him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To fund extensive welfare reforms he proposed taxes on land ownership and high incomes in the "People's Budget" (1909), which the Conservative-dominated House of Lords rejected. The resulting constitutional crisis was only resolved after two elections in 1910 and the passage of the Parliament Act 1911. His budget was enacted in 1910, and the National Insurance Act 1911 and other measures helped to establish the modern welfare state. In 1913, he was embroiled in the Marconi scandal, but he remained in office and promoted the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales until 1914, when its implementation was suspended in response to the outbreak of the First World War. (Full article...)

“ My conception of freedom. - The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what you achieved with it, but in what you pay for them - what they cost us. I'll give an example. The liberal institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are reached: there is no worse later and more thorough injuring the freedom than liberal institutions. We know, indeed, what they bring to ways: they undermine (unterminiren) the will to power, they are raised on moral leveling of hills and valleys, they make small, cowardly and pleasure, - triumphs with them every time the herd. Liberalism: in German bring herd's animalization (Heerden- Verthierung)... These same institutions as long as they are still fought for, produce very different effects, then in fact they promote freedom in a powerful way. Specifically looked on, it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which can take more than the war illiberal instincts. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom! That one has the will to self -responsibility. That the distance that separates us notes. That is to toil, hardship, privation, even to the lives of indifferent. That one is willing to sacrifice its cause not the people charged. Freedom means that the male, the war and the victorious happy instincts have dominion over other instincts, for example of the "happiness". The things that has become (Derfreigewordne) man, how much more the spirit freed (freigewordne) occurs with feet on the contemptible type of well-being of the grocer, dream Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man is warrior.- What is the measure of freedom, to individuals, as nations? After the resistance that must be overcome by the effort it cost to stay on top. The highest type of free men had to be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is psychologically true, if you here among the "tyrants" relentless and terrible instincts understand that challenge the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves - the most beautiful type of Julius Caesar - and this is politically true, they only do its course through history. The nations that were worth something, were worth, this was never under liberal institutions: great danger made something out of them, deserve the respect, the danger that we know our expedients, our virtues, our military and weapons, our spirit only teaches - which forces us to be strong... First principle: it must necessary have to be strong: it's never been otherwise. - Those large hothouses for the strong, the strongest type of person who has been given, the aristocratic community in the way of Rome and Venice freedom accurately understood in the sense that I understand the word freedom as something that you have and lacks, that you want, this one conquers... ” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, 1889.

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