John Locke
Adam Smith
Immanuel Kant
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Jeremy Bentham
Benjamin Constant
Jean-Baptiste Say
Wilhelm von Humbolt
David Ricardo
Frederic Bastiat
Alexis de Tocqueville
John Stuart Mill
Herbert Spencer
Carl Menger
Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk
Max Weber
Ludwig von Mises
Wilhelm Ropke
Freidrich Hayek
Karl Popper
Milton Friedman
James Buchanan
John Rawls
Murray Rothbard
Ayn Rand
Robert Nozick

My favorite liberal theorists!

A list of famous liberal theorists who developed liberalism.

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

Each country has their own variant and variants of liberalism. This leads to complications of who is considered a liberal has regional variance.

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

I wish there was an easy liberal litmus test, but I’ll settle for Wikipedia’s:

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis)[1] is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights.[2] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, and freedom of religion.[3][4][5][6][7]

Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as nobility, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John Locke, who is often credited for the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.

The revolutionaries in the American Revolution and the French Revolution used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of tyrannical rule. The nineteenth century saw liberal governments established in nations across Europe, Latin America, and North America. Liberal ideas spread even further in the twentieth century, when liberal democracies triumphed in two world wars and survived major ideological challenges from fascism and communism. Today, liberalism in its many forms remains as a political force to varying degrees of power and influence on all major continents.

A twenty-first century development is an emerging new liberalism that is centred on the concept of timeless freedom (ensuring the freedom of future generations through proactive action taken today).[8] This is an idea that has been endorsed by the President of Liberal International Hans van Baalen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Liberalism

I like Wikipedia’s portals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Libertarianism

Libertarianism is a variant of liberalism.

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

Libertarianism is variously defined by sources. It is generally used to describe political philosophies which emphasize freedom, individual liberty, and voluntary association. Libertarians generally advocate a society with small or no government power.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines libertarianism as the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things.[1] Historian George Woodcock defines libertarianism as a critical individualist social philosophy, aimed at transforming society by reform or revolution, that fundamentally doubts authority.[2] Philosopher Roderick T. Long defines libertarianism as “any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals”, whether “voluntary association” takes the form of the free market or of communal co-operatives.[3] According to the U.S. Libertarian Party, libertarianism is the advocacy of a government that is funded voluntarily and limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.[4]

Libertarian schools of thought differ over the degree to which the state should be reduced. Anarchistic schools advocate complete elimination of the state. Minarchist schools advocate a state which is limited to protecting its citizens from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. Some minarchist libertarians accept minimal public assistance for the poor.[5] Additionally, some schools are supportive of private property rights in the ownership of unappropriated land and natural resources while others reject such private ownership and often support common ownership instead.[6][7][8] Another distinction can be made among libertarians who support private ownership and those that support common ownership of the means of production; the former generally supporting a capitalist economy, the latter a socialist economic system. Contractarian libertarianism holds that any legitimate authority of government derives not from the consent of the governed, but from contract or mutual agreement, though this can be seen as reducible to consequentialism or deontologism depending on what grounds contracts are justified.[9][10][11] Some Libertarian socialists reject deontological and consequential approaches and use normative class-struggle methodologies rooted in Hegelian thought to justify direct action in pursuit of liberty.[12]

In most parts of the world, the term “libertarianism” is synonymous with Left anarchism.[13] In the United States, the term libertarian is commonly associated with those who have conservative positions on economic issues and liberal positions on social issues.[14] This is based on the common meanings of “conservative” and “liberal” in the United States.

You’re trying to collapse the world into a dichotomy: either you support Americans Elect OR you are a defender of the Status-Quo Circus. I don’t buy that dichotomy. I think it’s possible to support a change to the status quo of top-down politics while having a big problem with the top-down approach of Americans Elect.

Chuck Todd – my GOD
you’re such a TOOL!

This would only have been more blatant if it came from Fox.

“No special influence whatsoever?” What is Americans Elect talking about?

Watch the video: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-daily-rundown/46464703

Yes, we kind of have to trust them. Why not? You sure can’t trust these other yahoos and we already KNOW that. I’m really no worse off if the whole thing *is* a charade to hide Big Money manipulation of a 3rd party President.

But as unlikely as that actually is in the first place?

There’s much better ways to spend their money.

So, mock them and call them stupid if that makes you feel better about the Status-Quo Circus you’re implicitly defending. But to suggest that they are trying to be sneaky and corrupt doesn’t really make any sense.

Even Judge Judy can tell you that if it doesn’t make sense, it usually isn’t true.

Hey while we’re on the environmental platform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktYtxh1HYdo&feature=player_embedded
Vanishing of the Bees – Beekeeper Leaks EPA Document.
The EPA is failing in their mission to protect the environment and granting licenses to companies whose products are scientifically unsound, as this video explains. Not good.