Libertarianism

A POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, libertarianism values and promotes personal liberty and responsibility, small government, and a free-market economy. Libertarianism is also known as classical or 19th-century liberalism. During the 20th century, the “liberal” label was appropriated in the United States, though not in Europe, by those who value personal liberty and a state that intervenes extensively in the economy. Hence, the “libertarian” [Page 738]label was created in 1950 to distinguish between the two ideologies.

Libertarian analysis locates political regimes between statist and libertarian poles according to their size of government. At the statist pole are totalitarian regimes that expand the state to occupy all the social space between the family and the state, abolishing civil society, for example, communism and Nazism. At the other pole, Libertarians would ...