"The Leaven of Liberalism" Part 4 Liberalism Defined

                                               Liberalism Defined



Liberalism is not like all the other "isms". It's not a fixed system like socialism, communism or capitalism. Liberalism is more like a driving force, a cause or a means. It's an agent of change which seeks to alter or modify a fixed or established system. Much like leaven, liberalism will even morph into the properties in which it is being implanted. What I mean by this is; liberalism, when planted in church theology, becomes church doctrine. When liberalism is presented to our schools, it becomes education. When it's kneaded into our justice system, it becomes law, etc...

Liberalism, as we know it today, has lurched in the shadows of American politics since the birth of our nation. Initially, it developed in Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as a theory to guard the industrial and commercial classes in their struggle against the monarchy and the church. The economic roots of liberalism seem to be associated with a philosophy called "laissez faire" which, ironically, means to "let go" or "leave alone". In eighteenth century France, liberal economist's and philosopher's coined the phrase "laissez faire et laissez passer" which, interpreted, means: "let go and let pass". The idea was, for the government to leave the individual alone and let commodities circulate freely. Sounds more like a 20th century conservative, doesn't it? But one must remember, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, everything was pretty much controlled either by tyrannical monarchies as well as the church hierarchy, both of which imposed drastic hardships on the individual. Liberalism was one of the first ideologies to challenge these strongholds, which tended to restrain the individual in many ways.

However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, liberalism became more of a hindrance to the hard working individual than a help. As capitalism began to thrive in America, and prosperity and great wealth came to so many individuals, the ideals of liberalism were modified to ensure a minimum standard of living for the less fortunate. The socialistic aspect of liberalism aims to remove extreme levels of poverty and  wealth. In other words; this philosophy states, everyone should enjoy the same standard of living, regardless of how hard or how little one works. It's nothing like the principles America was founded on.

Of course, the problem with this ideology is it's rooted in godlessness and rebellion; as we saw in Part 3 "The Origins of Liberalism". How long will America continue to put a worldly Band-Aid on a spiritual wound? In Part 5 we will take a look at that question.