Brothers Judd is the best blog on the web. Why, because they are the only ones who put up great news tidbits with REALLY MEATY stuff like this post on "Classical Liberalism" as compared to today's Liberalism - which isn't really liberal at all - but more totalitarian than any of its proponents wants to admit.
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Through Belmont.edu - A definition of Classical Liberalism
"In this context, classical liberalism includes the following:
an ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society, the support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system, the desire for a limited constitutional government to protect individuals' rights from others and from its own expansion, and the universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions."
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Great stuff, Huh? Read that over a few times. Put it in your favorites somewhere. Then check out the comment below....
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...and the problem is readily apparent. For modern liberalism, which is secular, rights are purely gifts of the state. All else follows.
The classical, or American, premise is quite different:
You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.
--John Adams
