Definition of Political Liberalism Essay

The world has developed from the old age to the new technological and civilized advancements. Several things have developed in governance and leadership. There is more of liberation, democracy, and freedom both socially and in the political arena (Cartel, 2007). There are still many people in our communities who are still keeping the old methods of dealing with situations and issues.

These are conservatives who are still holding on their traditions, cultures, leadership and religion (Cartel, 2007). Human beings have evolved from various aspects of living both politically and socially. They have freedom to do anything at their will or according to the guidelines they have set which is liberty (Cartel, 2007).

In politics, people have the right to elect whoever they feel like electing without any bias. They do it in their own will and decide on whom to support in his or her candidacy. In some cases, people hold on to their political parties and support the members fully without any external force compelling them to do it (Cartel, 2007).

Some people will vote for a person in order to protect their interests while another group will elect someone in order to fill the vacant position and have no good reason as to why they chose one for the other. In general this is termed as political liberalism where a lot of freedom is noticed in the political arena (Rawls, 2005).

In our sociology and philosophy, we will realize two aspects of liberty; the positive and negative liberty. Positive liberty allows a person to perform whatever he or she feels like doing without being inhibited by any external forces from the society as a result of racism, sexuality, religion background, gender, social class or political grounds (Cartel, 2007).

Every human being has the freedom to carry out his or her activities without any interference from any other person or authority due to his belief or political opinion in relation to positive liberty.

People have the capacity, ability and opportunity to do what they want to do despite the obstacles ahead of them. In negative liberty, a person has the freedom to carry out activities to the extent that no person or authority that interferes with whatever he or she does (Cartel, 2007).

The negative concept tries to define what extent is a person or crowd can exercise their freedom without external interference (Cartel, 2007). An example of positive and negative liberty is considering a person who is driving a car and on his way meets a junction where he might either turn right or left, the driver might decide to turn either side without any force compelling him (Cartel, 2007).

In the second case take a driver who gets to the junction and decides to turn right in order to pick a bottle of wine despite the meeting he as on the other left turn he has left. one driver deicide to take a turn out of his free will while the other take a turn because of his urge to have wine and has the freedom to it (Cartel, 2007).

Many scholars have researched on political liberalism and developed various theories in relation to liberty (Cartel, 2007). We have several texts from Modus and Rawl that try to discuss the topic on political liberalism. Rawl’s text is rich in ideas and suggestion on the policies to develop in preparing a good society structure (Rawls, 2005).

There is no big difference between freedom and liberty and in some situations the words may be used interchangeably. (Cartel, 2007)The word freedom refers to a person being free to do whatever he fells or wants to do without any restrictions from the agent, self and other obstructions. This makes the word freedom to have close relationship with liberty (Cartel, 2007).

References

Cartel, I. (2007, October 8). Positive and Negative Liberty. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/

Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberation. New York: Columbia University Press.