Saturday, November 27, 2010

freedom

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" remains as good a concise definition of liberalism’s aims today as it was when Thomas Jefferson borrowed the language of John Locke for the Declaration of Independence. What distinguishes liberalism, however, is not just high aspirations but strikingly effective principles for the creation as well as the control of power. From its origins as constitutional liberalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the liberal project has provided the basis of the most prosperous and powerful states in the world.

-Paul Starr, Freedom's Power

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