Among the more significant topics of in this blog have been Classical Liberalism and the Enlightenment. Those aren't common topics of conversation, but they are behind many conversations that people have, because they can openly converse about many topics, because the Enlightenment happened; the forces of religion were fought back into their caged minds, and we, Classical Liberals, asserted the rights of all to free speech and the other freedoms. Classical Liberalism established the freedoms that ...
Updated 03-31-2017 at 06:26 PM by PeterL
All countries that even pretend to have democratic institutions have freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and that includes the right to be able to use billboards, radio and television, the internet, etc. and to contract with publishers to carry advertisements for one’s preferred issues, candidates, or whatever in newspapers, magazines, electronic media, etc. This is quite straightforward, but there are people who seem to think that such freedom of expression is not ...
The idea of free speech has been around for quite a while. It was essential to Ancient Greek democracy, and in ancient times the suppression of free speech was often a clear sign that government was acting badly. The actual origins of the idea of free speech aren't important, and the origins predate history, so there is a limit on what we can say about it. But the re-emergence of free speech during and after the Reformation and during the Age of Reason is very important to the concept of free speech ...
Updated 05-11-2015 at 10:10 AM by PeterL
The philosophy and idealism that was championed during the Enlightenment and cherished in the United States of America and restored by the Counter Culture in the 1960’s and 1970’s is starting to erode again. There seem to be people who think that their opinions and religious beliefs are better than the opinions of others. I learned that that opinion is best characterized as totalitarianism, and it has led to religious persecution in the past and in the present. That is the philosophy that ISIS is ...
There seem to be people who think that liberalism is a synonym for socialism, and that people like Ted Kennedy and Obama et alia were or are liberals. Sometimes it seems like people think that liberalism and state socialism are the same things. Nothing could be further from the truth. Liberalism is about freedoms: s free and fair elections, civil rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free trade, and private property, free thought, etc. It is a philosophical movement that began with ...