What is the true definition of political liberalism?
Liberalism in terms of political opinion has an interesting history. First, the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition is as follows: “Favourable to constitutional changes and legal or administrative reforms tending in the direction of freedom or democracy. Henced used as the designation of the party holding such opinions, in England or other states; opposed to Conservative.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Science (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991, p. 335) provides a definition of “liberal parties”: “Originated as the organized expression of what may be termed the political left in nineteenth-century Europe. Their demands for constitutional, parliamentary government and for a secular state … brought them into conflict, respectively, with conservative forces espousing older monarchical or aristocratic principles of government and with clerical, usually Catholic, defenders of a religious view of the state.” Taking from Safire’s New Political Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1
