Confusing Definitions of Democracy
^^ The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190080242.001.0001/oso-9780190080242
Exposed: The Most Toxic & Corrosive GOP Meme Ever - Once citizens
believe a nation is "a republic but not a democracy" it’s easier for a
strongman to limit majority-rule voting so “only the right people” get
to vote or have their vote counted
https://hartmannreport.com/p/exposed-the-most-toxic-and-corrosive
Under Construction: History of Republics & Mixed Government
https://immortalista.blogspot.com/p/history-of-republics-mixed-gov.html
In general, republicanism refers to the ideology embraced by members of a republic, which is a form of representational government in which
-
leaders are elected for a specific period by
the preponderance of the citizenry, and -
laws are passed by these leaders for the benefit
of the entire republic, rather than select members
of a ruling class, or aristocracy.
In an ideal republic, leaders are elected from among the working citizenry, serve the republic for a defined period, then return to their work, never to serve again.
Unlike a direct or "pure" democracy, in which the majority vote rules, a republic guarantees a certain set of basic civil rights to every citizen, codified in a charter or constitution, which cannot be overridden by majority rule.
Key Concepts
Republicanism stresses several key concepts, notably;
- the importance of civic virtue,
- the benefits of universal political participation,
- the dangers of corruption,
- the need for separate powers within government, and
- a healthy reverence for the rule of law.
From these concepts - one paramount value stands apart - political liberty.
Political liberty, in this case, refers not only to freedom from government interference in private affairs, but it also places great emphasis on self-discipline and self-reliance.
Under a monarchy, for instance;
an all-powerful leader decrees what the citizenry is
and is not allowed to do.
stay out of the lives of the individuals they serve, unless the republic as a whole is threatened, say in the case of a violation of a civil liberty guaranteed by the charter or constitution.
A republican government usually has several safety nets in place to offer assistance to those in need, but the general assumption is that most individuals are capable of helping themselves and their fellow citizens.
History
The word republic comes from the Latin phrase res publica, meaning "thing of the people" or the public property.
The Romans rejected their king and formed a republic in about 500 BCE. There were three periods of republics until it finally fell in 30 BCE.
Republicanism saw revivals in Europe during the Middle Ages, but chiefly in limited areas and for short times.
It was not until the American and French revolutions that republicanism took more of a foothold.
https://www.thoughtco.com/a-definition-of-republicanism-3303634
Republicanism is a theory of government that emphasizes the participation of citizens for the common good of the community. The responsibilities and duties of citizens are paramount, and the exemplary citizen readily subordinates personal to public interests. In contrast to liberalism, which is concerned primarily with the personal and private rights of individuals, republicanism stresses the public rights and obligations of citizens to cooperate in support of theircommunity.
Essential characteristics of republicanism are beliefs or assumptions about the relationships of individuals, the community, and government, including the following ideas:
- the needs of the community are considered superior to the claims of the individual,
- citizens are obligated to participate extensively and cooperatively in public affairs,
- the common civic identity is primary over diverse and particular identities,
- political and civic unity are valued more than diversity or pluralism in the community,
- citizens are equal in their duties, responsibilities, and rights,
- participation by citizens is the means to accountability in government and to personal fulfillment,
- popular sovereignty is the foundation of good government,
- good government carries out the general will of the people,
- all citizens are capable of self-rule,
- all citizens are capable of civic virtue and are obligated to cultivate it,
- good republican government depends upon the continuous civic and political participation of virtuous citizens.
Republicanism is rooted in the political and civic ideas of classical antiquity, as they were expressed and practiced in the city-communities of Greece and in the Republic of Rome. These ideas were revived during the Renaissance era in western Europe, particularly in the city-based republics of northern Italy, such as Florence, Genoa, and Venice. Leading French philosophers of the European Enlightenment, such as Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, also put forward republican political ideas.
By contrast, the political philosophy of liberalism, based on the primacy of constitutionally guaranteed rights of individuals, is distinctly modern. Prominent among the formulators of liberal political ideas during and after the Enlightenment era were the English political philosophers John Locke and John Stuart Mill.
The founders of the United States of America combined ideas of republicanism and liberalism in their establishment of a constitutional government designed to guarantee the inherent and inalienable rights of individuals. The founding era produced a hybrid theory of liberal republicanism that developed into the democratic republic of the United States of America and subsequently influenced the worldwide spread of representative and constitutional democracy.
Proponents of the participatory model of democracy emphasize republicanism more than liberalism, but both systems of political thought have a place in their ideas about good government. Conversely, advocates of the liberal model of democracy recognize the importance of political and civic participation for the common good, but they subordinate it to the personal and private rights of individuals.
There is an ongoing debate among promoters of representative and constitutional democracy about the appropriate blend of these two strains of political thought in the institutions of government and the public life of citizens.
By John Patrick, Understanding Democracy, A Hip Pocket Guide (Oxford
University Press)
https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/glossary_term/republicanism/
Republicanism is a political ideology centered on citizenship in a state organized as a republic. Historically, it ranges from the rule of a representative minority or oligarchy to popular sovereignty. It has had different definitions and interpretations which vary significantly based on historical context and methodological approach.
Republicanism may also refer to the non-ideological scientific approach to politics and governance. As the republican thinker and second president of the United States John Adams stated in the introduction to his famous A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, the "science of politics is the science of social happiness" and a republic is the form of government arrived at when the science of politics is appropriately applied to the creation of a rationally designed government. Rather than being ideological, this approach focuses on applying a scientific methodology to the problems of governance through the rigorous study and application of past experience and experimentation in governance. This is the approach that may best be described to apply to republican thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli (as evident in his Discourses on Livy), John Adams, and James Madison.
The word "republic" derives from the Latin noun-phrase res publica
(public thing), which referred to the system of government that
emerged in the 6th century BCE following the expulsion of the kings
from Rome by Lucius Junius Brutus and Collatinus.
This form of government in the Roman state collapsed in the latter
part of the 1st century BCE, giving way to what was a monarchy in
form, if not in name. Republics recurred subsequently, with, for
example, Renaissance Florence or early modern Britain. The concept of
a republic became a powerful force in Britain's North American
colonies, where it contributed to the American Revolution. In Europe,
it gained enormous influence through the French Revolution and through
the First French Republic of 1792–1804.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism
Republicanism is a term for beliefs that have defined the American political experiment. In particular, republicanism stems from a form a government where the people are sovereign. In such a government, virtuous and autonomous citizens must exercise self-control for the common good. Republican citizens should not seek office or use public office for economic gain. Public officials must subordinate their personal ambitions for the good of the community. A republican citizen also must be prepared to thwart corrupting influences that would lead the nation toward tyranny or despotism. Republicanism is based on the assumption that liberty and power continually battle. Therefore, citizens must protect a fragile liberty from destructive power. Perhaps most importantly, all citizens (the definition of which has changed over the years) in a republic are equal.
Republicanism is a complicated idea. The concept placed Aristotle’s concept of man as a political animal and the Renaissance idea of civic virtue in the context of Christianity. As a result of this complicated fusion, Americans then and now interpret republicanism and the founders’ intentions differently. Historians seem to agree on this one thing: republicanism symbolized a commitment to civic virtue.
The language of republicanism proliferated in America in the years preceding the American Revolution. American colonists drew from a variety of sources in composing a republican language. Some drew inspiration from the Puritans in New England. Others found answers in the English common law tradition. Many found evidence of a republican tradition in the republics of ancient Greece and Rome. Some pointed to a tradition of civic humanism in Florence, Italy during the time of Niccolo Machiavelli. But what really inspired the American colonists were the writings by British philosophers, such as Henry Bolingbroke, Thomas Gordon, John Locke, and John Trenchard, that appeared during the English Civil War, the Commonwealth period, and the early eighteenth century.
Colonists combined these disparate philosophies to compare their ideal republic with the actual monarchy of Great Britain. Freedom had defined the republics of antiquity whereas Great Britain, a former flourishing republic, had decayed into a corrupt monarchy. The pursuit of gain had created a class based society and a government based on excessive patronage. In turn, British society became corrupt. Because citizens placed personal gain ahead of self-sacrifice, the king assumed additional powers that ultimately deprived citizens of their liberties. If America were to survive, it could not replicate the example of Great Britain.
The republic of the founding Fathers of America was much different than the monarchies of the old world. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, among others, endeavored to reorder politics. This would be accomplished in several ways. One, an elective democracy of citizens would be judged by merit and not ancestral lineage. Two, a weak executive would be less likely to influence and corrupt legislators. Third, frequent elections would ensure that officials remained committed to the public good. Fourth, the series of checks and balances in the constitution would prevent any political faction or sector of society from threatening the majority. Such an experiment, the founders believed, would create an ideal society that the rest of the world would emulate.
During the political battles of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, republican language became the weapon of choice. Federalists and Republicans presented themselves as the true defenders of the American Revolution and republican government. The parties constantly reminded citizens that their opponents undermined republicanism. Federalists charged that if their political adversaries assumed power then they would install the worst aspects of the French Revolution into American society. Republicans maintained that the Federalist policies would lead the country towards corruption and a monarchy. During the Age of Jackson, Democrats and Whigs continued to cast themselves as defenders of republicanism. Like their political predecessors, both warned that if the people supported their adversaries, then the republic would devolve into anarchy or military despotism. Democrats feared that the “money power” of banks and protective tariffs threatened personal freedoms whereas Whigs charged that the democratic ethos of their opponents would lead to the reign of “King Mob.” As the nation approached the precipice of disunion, Democrats and Republicans feared the impending demise of republicanism. Northerners and Southerners claimed to fight the Civil War to defend their vision of an ordered republic.
Historians use republicanism as an analytical tool to describe the political insurgency throughout American history. For historians who believe in a republican synthesis, republicanism is an alternative tool to liberalism which stresses individual rights, progress, and capitalism. In addition to using republicanism to define the ideology of the American Revolution, scholars have used republicanism to describe the political battles of the antebellum period, early women’s rights movements, labor protests, and agrarian unrest.
https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/republicanism/
1. Political Liberty as Non-Domination
Absolutely central to the contemporary civic republican program is the conception of political liberty as non-domination or independence from arbitrary power, and so it makes good sense to begin with an explication of this idea.
1.1 Political Liberty, Positive and Negative
It is notorious that there are several competing conceptions of political liberty. The now standard account was laid down most influentially by Isaiah Berlin in his famous lecture on “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin 1969).
According to the first, ‘negative’ conception of liberty, people are free simply to the extent that their choices are not interfered with. There are many variations on this conception, depending on how exactly one wants to define ‘interference’, but they all have in common the basic intuition that to be free is, more or less, to be left alone to do whatever one chooses. This idea of negative liberty Berlin associates especially with the classic English political philosophers Hobbes, Bentham, and J. S. Mill, and it is today probably the dominant conception of liberty, particularly among contemporary Anglo-American philosophers. In Mill’s well-known words, “the only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs” (1859, 17).
The second, ‘positive’ conception of liberty is not quite so easy to define. Roughly speaking, a person or group is free in the positive sense to the extent that they exercise self-control or self-mastery. It is not agreed, however, what exactly constitutes this self-mastery in the relevant sense. According to one particularly influential account, to be free in the positive sense is to be able to act on one’s second-order desires (Frankfurt 1982). For example, the addicted gambler may be free in the negative sense not to gamble—since no one actually forces him to do so—, but he is not free in the positive sense unless he actually succeeds in acting on his presumed second-order desire not to desire gambling. Berlin associates this second conception especially with such continental philosophers as Spinoza, Rousseau, and Hegel. Although it found some support among English Hegelians like T. H. Green, those who advocate the positive conception of liberty have generally been in the minority, particularly among contemporary Anglo-American philosophers.
The troubling implications of the positive conception of liberty are well-known, and need not be rehearsed at length here. For the most part, these stem from the problem that freedom in the positive sense would seem to license fairly extensive coercion on behalf of individuals’ allegedly ‘real’ interests—for example, coercively forcing the gambler to quit on the presumption that this is, in fact, what he really wants to do (even if he doesn’t say so). Regarding this danger, Berlin writes:
It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good which I am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit … [But] it is another to say that if it is my good, then I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am free (or ‘truly’ free) even when my poor earthly body and foolish mind bitterly reject it, and struggle against those who seek however benevolently to impose it … . (1969, 134)
Liberals like Berlin have thus understandably rejected the positive, and emphatically embraced the negative conception of liberty. The question remains, however, whether the received view of negative liberty as non-interference in particular adequately captures the political ideal we should be most interested in. Contemporary civic republicans argue that it does not.
1.2 Liberty as Non-Domination
By way of illustration, consider the following scenarios (both are standard examples in the republican tradition). In the first, imagine a group of slaves with a generally well-meaning master. While the latter has an institutionally-protected right to treat his slaves more or less as he pleases (he might start whipping them just for the heck of it, say), let us suppose that this master in particular leaves his slaves for the most part alone. Now to the extent that he does not in fact interfere with his slaves on a day-to-day basis, we are committed to saying—on the non-interference view of liberty—that they enjoy some measure of freedom. Some find this conclusion deeply counterintuitive: if there is anything to the idea of political liberty, one might think, surely it cannot be found in the condition of slavery!
Even if we are willing to accept this conclusion, the non-interference view of liberty commits us to others that are perhaps even more paradoxical. For one thing, notice that we are committed to saying that the slaves of our well-meaning master enjoy greater freedom than the slaves of an abusive master down the road. Of course, the former slaves are better off in some respect than the latter, but do we really want to say that they are more free? For another, consider the slave who, over time, comes to understand his master’s psychological dispositions better and better. Taking advantage of this improved insight, he manages to keep on his master’s good side, and is consequently interfered with less and less. Thus, on the non-interference view of liberty, we are committed to saying that his freedom is increasing over time. Again, while it is clear that the slave’s greater psychological insight improves his well-being in some respect, do we really want to say that it increases his freedom specifically?
Now consider a second scenario. Imagine the colony of a great imperial power. Suppose that the colonial subjects have no political rights, and thus that the imperial power governs them unilaterally. But further suppose that the imperial power, for one reason or another, chooses not to exercise the full measure of its authority—that its policy towards the colony is one of more or less benign neglect. From the point of view of liberty as non-interference, we must conclude that the colonial subjects enjoy considerable freedom with respect to their government for, on a day-to-day basis, their government hardly ever interferes with them. Next suppose that the colonial subjects revolt with success, and achieve political independence. The former colony is now self-governing. We may imagine, however, that the new government is somewhat more active than its imperial predecessor, passing laws and instituting policies that interfere with people’s lives to a greater extent than formerly was the case. On the view of liberty as non-interference, we must therefore say that there has been a decline in freedom with independence. As in the first scenario, many find this counterintuitive. Surely, a nation that has secured its independence from colonial rule must have increased its political liberty.
What these examples are driving at is that political liberty might best be understood as a sort of structural relationship that exists between persons or groups, rather than as a contingent outcome. Whether a master chooses to whip his slave on any given day, we might say, is a contingent outcome: it all depends on the master’s mood, the slave’s behavior, and so forth. What is not contingent (or at least not in the same way) is the broader configuration of laws, institutions, and norms that effectively permit masters to treat their slaves however they please. As the ex-slave Frederick Douglass said of his former condition, “it was slavery—not its mere incidents—that I hated” (1855, 161).
The republican conception of political liberty aims to capture this insight as directly as possible. It defines freedom as a sort of structural independence—as the condition of not being subject to the arbitrary or uncontrolled power of a master. Pettit, who has done more than anyone else to develop this republican conception of freedom philosophically, puts it thus: a person or group enjoys freedom to the extent that no other person or group has “the capacity to interfere in their affairs on an arbitrary basis” (1999, 165; cf. Pettit 1996, 1997, 2001, 2012, 2014). On a plausible rendering of the term ‘domination’ as, roughly speaking, arbitrary or uncontrolled power (see Wartenberg 1990; Pettit 1996, 1997, 2012; Lovett 2001, 2010, 2018), we might equivalently say that freedom in the republican sense consists in the secure enjoyment of non-domination. This view has since been widely embraced by republican-minded authors such as Skinner (1998, 2002, 2008), Viroli (2002), Maynor (2003, 2015), Laborde (2008, 2010), Costa (2009, 2013, 2016), Honohan (2013, 2014), and Taylor (2017).
1.3 Republican versus Negative Liberty
Notice that the republican view of freedom is, at least in the broad sense, a negative conception of political liberty. One need not do or become anything in particular to enjoy political liberty in the republican sense; one need not exercise self-mastery, on any view of what that entails, nor succeed in acting on one’s second-order desires (Skinner 1984, 1991, 2002; Spitz 1993). Republican freedom merely requires the absence of something, namely, the absence of any structural dependence on arbitrary power or domination. (Also like non-interference, non-domination comes in degrees: on the civic republican view, one is not either free or unfree, but rather more or less free depending on the extent of non-domination one securely enjoys.)
Despite these similarities, however, republican freedom is not equivalent to the received view of negative liberty as non-interference. In contrast to the non-interference view, it easily accounts for our intuitions in the two scenarios described above. The slave lacks freedom because he is vulnerable to the arbitrary power of his master; whether his master happens to exercise that power is neither here nor there. Likewise, what matters with respect to political freedom on the republican view is not how much the imperial power chooses to govern its colony, but the fact that the former may choose to govern the latter as much and however it likes. Thus Joseph Priestley described the lightly-governed American colonies as nevertheless in a condition of servitude because “by the same power, by which the people of England can compel them to pay one penny, they may compel them to pay the last penny they have” (1769, 140).
Moreover, the republican conception captures in a more intuitively satisfying way what would improve either situation with respect to political liberty. Most people are not inclined to say that slaves enjoy increasing freedom just because, with experience, they improve their insight into their master’s psychological dispositions. But many would be inclined to say that their freedom is enhanced, other things being equal, if some effective reform in the laws, institutions, or norms sharply reduced their master’s authority over them. (This is not necessarily to say that the slaves will enjoy greater well-being, all things considered—only that because their domination is lessened, they enjoy greater freedom to that extent.) And of course, no matter how benevolent their particular master happens to be, no slave can be completely free until the institution of slavery itself is abolished.
Political freedom, in other words, is constituted by rightly-ordered laws, institutions, and norms: “to enjoy such non-domination, after all, is just to be in a position where no one can interfere arbitrarily in your affairs,” writes Pettit, “and you are in that position from the moment that the institutions are in place” inhibiting possible arbitrary interference (1997, 107). Political freedom is most fully realized, on this view, in a well-ordered self-governing republic of equal citizens under the rule of law, where no one citizen is the master of any other (Pettit 1989, 1997, 2012, 2014; Skinner 1991, 1998; Spitz 1993, 1995; Viroli 2002; Maynor 2003; Lovett 2012a, 2016a). In the classic expression of James Harrington, such a community would be an “empire of laws and not of men” (1656, 8).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/republicanism/
Art and Republicanism
https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Aest/AestInci.htm
# Liberalism Is Not Enough | National Affairs
In the 1960s and '70s, scholars like Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood began to expose significant weaknesses in its underlying claims. They argued that the evidence did not support the theory that the American political tradition — and the American founding, in particular — was monolithically liberal, cast in the mold of Lockean individualism. Rather, they posited that a distinctive form of republicanism served as the American Revolution's true "ideology."
Republicanism is a political tradition that traces its lineage to a classical view of citizenship embodied in certain Greek city-states and the Roman republic. Like liberalism, republicanism takes liberty to be essential for politics. And yet it diverges from liberalism in its understanding of freedom and the emphasis it places on equality.
To be a citizen in the republican tradition is to be both free and equal. Freedom here, above all, means not servile — not subject to domination or arbitrary coercion. At the same time, the republican notion of citizenship, which has roots in the ancient Greek notion of the polis, makes stringent demands upon the citizenry, since it considers the obligations of rulership to be jointly incumbent upon all citizens. Republicanism thus entails a "positive" concept of liberty as well as a negative one: The republican citizen is not just free from coercion; he is also free for civic life.
Republicanism also emphasizes the centrality of the common good in its notion of freedom. Rather than viewing man as a sovereign individual motivated by self-interest — a distinctly economic notion of man born of liberalism — republicanism conceives of man as a political animal, a citizen among citizens within a polis who strives to exercise the virtues needed to practice the politics of self-rule. As Wood observes, under republicanism, "[l]iberty [is] realized when the citizens [are] virtuous — that is, willing to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community." Virtue in the republican tradition is understood primarily as public virtue.
This is not to say that republicanism sees man as utterly altruistic. On the contrary, as latter-day republican Hannah Arendt points out, republicanism understands ambition to be a motivating factor in civic participation: The Roman citizen, for instance, acted in the hope that his honor might be immortalized. Within this ambition, republicanism recognizes a concomitant danger of vainglory and corruption, which is why well-designed structures of government — those that incorporate the rule of law, the separation of powers, and regular elections, among other safeguards — are deemed necessary to prevent any one citizen from acquiring or exercising too much power. Thus, like liberalism, republicanism is suspicious of government power, though not because it sees government as inherently evil. Rather, republicanism recognizes that man is liable to fail in virtue, especially in proportion to which he acquires power. Thus, republicanism insists that the institutions of government be carefully attended to and preserved from the corrupting influence of vice through the cultivation and exercise of civic virtue.
The republican principle of equality flows from this conception of citizenship. To be a republican citizen requires that there be no hierarchy of rulership: all are citizens, as opposed to subjects. And because all citizens are equal, they must all be free to assume the burdens of self-rulership — including the duty to participate in civic life. As historian J. G. A. Pocock put it, the republican citizen is "virtuous in his...engagement in relations of equality and ruling-and-being-ruled."
Many republicans have held that such political equality presupposes a degree of economic equality, especially in the form of a widespread distribution of property — what Christopher Lasch calls a "rough equality of condition." That's not to say that republicanism rejects the notion of private property; on the contrary, republicanism shares liberalism's concern for private property. But it does so not because it conceives of property as an end in itself — the protection of which is the raison d'être of the state. Rather, republicanism considers proprietorship a precondition for full participation in the polis. Public virtue, according to Wood, was thought to "be found only in a republic of equal, active, and independent citizens," and proprietorship was believed necessary to provide the minimal degree of economic independence required for men to discharge the duties of citizenship. Hence proprietorship, like the obligations of self-rule, ought to be enjoyed by all citizens.
In the 1960s, Bernard Bailyn posited that, although most people at the time characterized the American Revolution "as an expression of [liberalism's] natural rights philosophy," a particular current of republicanism had also made its way across the Atlantic to influence the American colonists. This current was exemplified by 18th-century English writers, polemicists, and politicians associated with the "country" opposition to the dominant "court" politics. Such individuals "applied to the politics of the age of Walpole the peculiar strain of anti-authoritarianism bred in the upheaval of the English Civil War."
Per Bailyn, Wood, and their followers, it was this republican vision of England's country opposition, more so than liberalism, that inspired early Americans. It provided the American revolutionaries with a powerful framework through which to criticize the Crown and justify their quest for independence, all while affirming continuity with the English political tradition. This "Atlantic republicanism" would remain a vital tradition within American political thought up through the end of the 19th century, at which point its substance would begin to dissipate.
Critics of Bailyn's and Wood's interpretation of the American Revolution claim that it downplays the genuine influence liberalism had on the founding generation. This criticism is not without merit. Though republicanism played a distinct role in stirring the founders to separate from England, liberalism undeniably influenced them as well — even if that influence is sometimes exaggerated. After all, the founders' affirmation of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" as "unalienable Rights" in the Declaration of Independence had overt Lockean overtones.
As historian Lance Banning observes, "early Revolutionary thinking...was always an amalgam of republican and liberal ideas, and [these] traditions did not merely coexist or stand objectively as separate and competing choices." Bailyn himself made much the same point: The "spokesmen of the Revolution," as he put it, were "both 'civic humanists' and 'liberals,' though with different emphases at different times and in different circumstances" (emphasis added). Rather than mutually exclusive ideologies, then, republicanism and liberalism are best thought of as separate veins of political thought that are intertwined and marbled through our country's history — from its revolutionary beginnings to today.
LIBERALISM IN AMERICA
The term "liberalism" originated in early-19th-century England as a term of opprobrium for political opponents of Toryism. The concept has much deeper roots, of course, claiming antecedents not only in Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, and Benjamin Constant, as well as the French philosophes, but also, as historian Dorothy Ross observed, in judicial modes of thought from classical Roman and medieval times. In her recent book The Lost History of Liberalism, Helena Rosenblatt traces liberalism all the way back to ancient Greece.
In formulating their vision for America, some founders drew especially heavily on the liberalism of theorists like Locke, Smith, and Hume — perhaps the most prominent among them being Alexander Hamilton. These founding-era liberals viewed commercial activity as a form of liberalization that not only increased wealth, but facilitated cooperative exchange, thereby engendering refinement and civility within the citizenry.
Other founders, like Thomas Jefferson, saw commercial activity as a source of potential corruption. As Wood points out, these early American republicans — like the "country" republicans of Walpole's England — worried that the "rise of banks, trading companies, and stock markets, plus the emergence of the new moneyed men, [and] the increasing public debt" would change the culture of the nascent republic, allowing self-interest to displace public virtue as society's chief animating principle.
Republican concerns would come to a head during the Industrial Revolution.
Liberalism Is Not Enough - M. Anthony Mills
https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/liberalism-is-not-enough
