America Liberalism

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America Liberalism

The United States of America is known throughout the world as the benchmark of a free society. America believes in a complex philosophy of liberalism. The question is where did this complex idea come from? Well one idea is that it was inherited from the early settlers of the American Colonies and it has been transforming ever since and is now the form we see today. My purpose is to prove to an audience that Puritan Theology and culture, Anti-Federalist arguments, and Federalist political thought, have all been profound influences on this idea of liberalism.

"By liberalism we mean that Americans tend to look first to the individual as the source of value rather than to an imposed dogmatic creed or hierarchy" (American Political Thinking). According to the way we look at liberalism in America today, there are two strands of it. The first strand is called "Classical Liberalism." This is the idea that peoples' property rights, their protection and a free economic market are more important than human welfare. For quite a long time, this was the only type of liberalism there was, until many people began to think that human rights were