{"id":58145,"date":"2026-05-28T01:00:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T05:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=58145"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T14:38:10","slug":"qotd-re-defining-economic-liberalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/28\/qotd-re-defining-economic-liberalism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Re-defining economic liberalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>The L-word is not taken to mean American &#8220;liberalism&#8221;, the distressingly anti-liberal, lawyer-driven politics of increasing governmental planning and regulation and physical coercion. It is instead the rest of the world&#8217;s &#8220;liberalism&#8221;, economist driven, &#8220;the liberal plan&#8221;, as old Adam Smith wrote in 1776, &#8220;of [social] equality, [economic] liberty and [legal] justice&#8221;, with a modest, restrained government giving real help to the poor. True modern liberalism.<\/p>\n<p>A liberal &#8220;rhetoric&#8221; explains the good features of the modern world compared with earlier and later illiberal <em>r\u00e9gimes<\/em> \u2014 the economic success of the modern world, its arts and sciences, its kindness, its toleration, its inclusiveness, and especially its massive liberation of more and more people from violent hierarchies ancient and modern. Its enemies claim that it also explains alleged evils, such as the reduction of everything to money or the loss of community or the calamity of immigration by non-Christians. But they are mistaken.<\/p>\n<p>Dierdre McCloskey, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/open-future\/2020\/01\/08\/the-power-of-liberalism-can-combat-oppression-in-all-its-forms\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The power of liberalism can combat oppression in all its forms&#8221;, <em>The Economist<\/em><\/a>, 2020-01-08. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The L-word is not taken to mean American &#8220;liberalism&#8221;, the distressingly anti-liberal, lawyer-driven politics of increasing governmental planning and regulation and physical coercion. It is instead the rest of the world&#8217;s &#8220;liberalism&#8221;, economist driven, &#8220;the liberal plan&#8221;, as old Adam Smith wrote in 1776, &#8220;of [social] equality, [economic] liberty and [legal] justice&#8221;, with a modest, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,7,10,41],"tags":[1080,198,267,550],"class_list":["post-58145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-history","category-liberty","category-quotations","tag-adamsmith","tag-equalrights","tag-justice","tag-libertarianism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-f7P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102715,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58145\/revisions\/102715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}