So why is the word now associated with people who are overly concerned with the rights and civil liberties of criminals and terrorists, support policies of distributing wealth from hard working successful people to the unaccomplished and unmotivated, argue that a discrimatory justice system is responsible for the high demographics of certain ethnicities in prison, and actually want government to strengthen it's control over business and the private sector thus interfering with natural competiton etc. Doesn't sound like the definiton previously stated above.
Don't forget the "Fairness Doctrine"
freedom of thought and speech,
Perhaps wikipedia.
Regardless, this definition is correct.
Any political scholar will tell you this.
Google 'adam smith' and liberalism.
Should give you a good idea of what it really is.
OK I did, thanks. The following is from wikipedia.
Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism[citation needed]) is
a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government.
This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law,
constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government[4] as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others. As such, it is the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism of the late 18th and 19th centuries.[2]
The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society,[5] though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of some basic public goods with what constitutes public goods being seen as very limited.[6] The qualification classical was applied retroactively to distinguish it from more recent, 20th-century conceptions of liberalism and its related movements, such as social liberalism.[7]
Classical liberals are suspicious of all but the most minimal government[8] and object to the welfare state[9].Hedge, you do feel that the current administration's actions demonstrate "Classic Liberalism?