Since "Liberalism" is one of the Seven Heavenly Virtues - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues

and the virtues outline good behavior guidelines

therefore by logical progression, those that besmirch, slander and defame "liberalism", are agents of evil acting against the desires of God - correct?

Hilarious the admittances of "you're right" by trying to discredit the source? uh the source isn't Wikipedia - the source is the very foundation of Christianity - Wiki merely provides an easy link

keep trying Cons! Diligence is also a virtue! although Cons have never been ones to have any interest in virtuous behaviors.

Answer 1

The article says liberality, not liberalism. This does raise a good point though. There is a legitimate school of thought that the social welfare system, eliminating poverty and hunger, and respect for human rights are Christian principles. Apparently many US Christians have forgotten that. WWJD? Let the children starve? Invade third world countries to "liberate" them?

Answer 2

Direct quote from your Wikipedia link:

"Liberality (Latin, liberalitas) (will, generosity, opposes greed, Latin avaritia)—Generosity. Willingness to give. A nobility of thought or actions."

You are mixing a theological virtue with a political ideology! Nowhere in that sentence--and that is the entire sentence quoted--does it mention LIBERALISM, which stresses free markets, freedom of trade and information, and the freedom of the individual. LIBERALITY is about being generous and kind to those in need.

So, that means there is no "logical progression" in your statement; therefore your argument about people who "besmirch, slander and defame 'liberalism'" is wrong.

Answer 3

That's old school Christianity.

Conservatives have hijacked Christianity. In todays conservatives minds, Jesus shoots an M16 and takes no prisoners. It's far from the truth, but that's what they believe.

As for you braindead losers who discredit wikipedia, you should know that wikipedia isn't the original source of those 7 virtues. You can google it and you'll find other sources. Too bad you can't think for yourselves.

Answer 4

You are looking at Liberalism as a philosophy , which as a philosphy by definition’, Maurice Cranston rightly pointed out, ‘a liberal is a man who believes in liberty’ (Cranston, 459).. First, liberals have typically maintained that humans are naturally in ‘a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions…as they think fit…without asking leave, or depending on the Will of any other Man’ (Locke, 1960 [1689]: 287). Mill too argued that ‘[T]he burden of proof is supposed to ith those who are against liberty; who contend for any restriction or prohibition…. The a priori assumption is in favour of freedom…’(Mill, 1991 [1859]: 472). This might be called the Fundamental Liberal Principle (Gaus, 1996: 162-166): freedom is normatively basic, and so the onus of justification is on those who would limit freedom. It follows from this that political authority and law must be justified, as they limit the liberty of citizens. Consequently, a central question of liberal political theory is whether political authority can be justified, and if so, how. It is for this reason that social contract theory, as developed by Thomas Hobbes (1948 [1651]), John Locke (1960 [1689]), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1973 [1762]) and Immanuel Kant (1965 [1797]), is usually viewed as liberal even though the actual political prescriptions of, say, Hobbes and Rousseau, have distinctly illiberal features. Insofar as they take as their starting point a state of nature in which humans are free and equal, and so argue that any limitation of this freedom and equality stands in need of justification (i.e., by the social contract), the contractual tradition expresses the Fundamental Liberal Principle.
The Fundamental Liberal Principle holds that restrictions on liberty must be justified, and because he accepts this, we can understand Hobbes as espousing a liberal political theory. But Hobbes is at best a qualified liberal, for he also argues that drastic limitations on liberty can be justified. Paradigmatic liberals such as Locke not only advocate the Fundamental Liberal Principle, but also maintain that justified limitations on liberty are fairly modest. Only a limited government can be justified. indeed, the basic task of government is to protect the equal liberty of citizens. Which is NOT what our Liberals of today believe...

Liberals of today follow what has come to be known as ‘new’, ‘revisionist’, or ‘welfare state’ liberalism challenges this intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property based market order (Freeden, 1978; Gaus, 1983a; Macpherson, 1973: ch. 4). Three factors help explain the rise of this revisionist theory. First, the new liberalism arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which the ability of a free market to sustain what Lord Beveridge (1944: 96) called a ‘prosperous equilibrium’ was being questioned (Gaus, 1983b). If a private property based market tended to be unstable, or could, as Keynes argued (1973 [1936]), get stuck in an equilibrium with high unemployment, new liberals came to doubt that it was an adequate foundation for a stable, free society. Here the second factor comes into play: just as the new liberals were losing faith in the market, their faith in government as a means of supervising economic life was increasing. This was partly due to the experiences of the First World War, in which government attempts at economic planning seemed to succeed (Dewey, 1929: 551-60); more importantly, this reevaluation of the state was spurred by the democratisation of western states, and the conviction that, for the first time, elected officials could truly be, in J.A. Hobson's phrase ‘representatives of the community’ (1922: 49). As D.G. Ritchie observed:

"be it observed that arguments used against ‘government’ action, where the government is entirely or mainly in the hands of a ruling class or caste, exercising wisely or unwisely a paternal or grandmotherly authority — such arguments lose their force just in proportion as the government becomes more and more genuinely the government of the people by the people themselves (1896: 64).
The third factor underlying the development of the new liberalism was probably the most fundamental: a growing conviction that, so far from being ‘the guardian of every other right’ (Ely, 1992: 26), property rights generated an unjust inequality of power that led to a less-than-equal liberty (typically, ‘positive liberty’) for the working class. This theme is central to contemporary American liberalism, which combines strong endorsement of civil and personal liberties with, at best, an indifference, and often enough an antipathy, to private ownership. Once again, the seeds of this newer liberalism can be found in Mill's On Liberty. Although Mill insisted that the ‘so-called doctrine of Free Trade’ rested on ‘equally solid’ grounds as did the ‘principle of individual liberty’ (1991 [1859]: 105), he nevertheless insisted that the justifications of personal and economic liberty were entirely distinct. And in his Principles of Political Economy Mill consistently emphasises that it is an open question whether personal liberty can flourish without private property (1976 [1871]: 210), a position that Rawls was to reaffirm a century later (1971: 258).

Todays liberalism is called Socialism..period

Answer 5

Not 'liberalism,' which is a political movement, but 'liberality,' which is Generosity or Charity, the opposite of greed.

Charity is, indeed, a fundamental Christian virtue, and one that liberalism denies, by taking the function of providing for the unfortunate away from individuals and voluntary charities, and placing it with tax-funded government bureacracies.


Wake up. I'm a life-long Atheist and I understand that much.

Answer 6

Absolutely true. Liberals are the ones upholding the teachings of religion rather than picking out selected statements to bash other people with.

Answer 7

And you belong to the Holy Church of Wikipedia?

Answer 8

Precisely!

Answer 9

You just have to love questioners who rely on Wikipedia for their "intelligence".

Answer 10

One could certainly interpret that in a way that would agree with your assertion.