{"id":297176,"date":"2025-06-23T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=297176"},"modified":"2025-06-22T09:36:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T08:36:52","slug":"the-evolution-of-leftist-and-liberal-ideas-from-the-18th-century-to-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/06\/the-evolution-of-leftist-and-liberal-ideas-from-the-18th-century-to-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of Leftist and Liberal Ideas from the 18th Century to Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Enlightened Liberty to Global Double Standards<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cMan is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u2014 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract<\/em> (1762)<\/p>\n

\u201cAll men are created equal.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014 United States Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (1776)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

21 Jun 2025 –<\/em> The American and French revolutions not only transformed political power but also set in motion a radical shift in how human beings understand themselves within society.<\/p>\n

The former, rooted in liberalism, proclaimed the defense of individual rights and limited government.<\/p>\n

The latter, more radical, advanced toward social justice, popular participation, and structural transformation of power. Both were born in the crucible of the Enlightenment, rational humanism, and a profound longing for freedom.<\/p>\n

The Birth of Two Great Currents: Liberalism and the Left<\/strong><\/p>\n

Modern liberalism finds its philosophical foundation in thinkers like John Locke, who asserted that the purpose of the State is to protect life, liberty, and property. Along similar lines, Thomas Paine, defender of American independence and later a protagonist of the French Revolution, wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.\u201d<\/em>
\n(Common Sense, 1776)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The left, in contrast, defined itself not only by opposition to absolutism but also to economic power. Its spirit crystallized with The Communist Manifesto<\/em> by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), which declared:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 19th and 20th Centuries: Promises, Fractures, and Shadows<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the 19th century, liberals defended market capitalism and individual liberties, yet often overlooked growing social inequalities. The left, from the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier to Marxist radical critique, demanded wealth redistribution and democratic control of the means of production.<\/p>\n

In the 20th century, the horrors of totalitarianism left a lasting mark. Liberalism opposed both fascism and communism, while parts of the Western left fell into the trap of defending repressive regimes in the name of \u201cthe people\u201d: from Stalin to Mao. As the great liberal thinker Isaiah Berlin warned:<\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Atomic Power and Geopolitical Hypocrisy<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear weapon became a symbol of absolute power. Yet its possession was legalized only for a few \u2014 the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom \u2014 all permanent members of the UN Security Council. The left, once dreaming of global disarmament, fell into a trap: it condemns Western arsenals but sometimes justifies the nuclear ambitions of regimes like Iran or North Korea, so long as they oppose \u201cthe West.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) formalized this inequality: the world accepts a closed nuclear club while demanding selective disarmament from others. Progressive thought should denounce this colonial logic \u2014 but too often remains silent, trapped in automatic anti-Westernism.<\/p>\n

Religion, Authoritarianism, and Moral Relativism<\/strong><\/p>\n

A delicate chapter in the present is the left\u2019s relationship with theocratic regimes. In the name of cultural diversity and anti-colonialism, some progressive intellectuals have turned a blind eye to oppression carried out by non-democratic religious governments \u2014 especially when these governments present themselves as victims of Western imperialism.<\/p>\n

Where, then, are the universal principles of feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, or freedom of expression when it comes to countries with laws rooted in strict interpretations of sacred texts?<\/p>\n

Voltaire, one of the fathers of the Enlightenment, had already warned:<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A Call for Coherence<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leftism and liberalism, though distinct, share a common root: the humanist universalism of the Enlightenment. Today, both currents are weakened by internal contradictions. Economic liberalism has lost the social soul it once carried, while parts of the left have abandoned the universal defense of human rights in favor of geopolitical relativism.<\/p>\n

Recovering credibility means returning to fundamentals: liberty with justice, equality without uniformity, criticism without sectarianism. As Albert Camus, who opposed both fascism and Stalinism, once said:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf man fails to reconcile justice and liberty, he fails in everything.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my opinion, those who fail to do so not only betray the movement that generated the greatest human revolution since the agricultural revolution \u2014 the Renaissance humanism \u2014 but also act as immoral intellectuals, driven by partisan political interests.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ernesto Kahan – Physician, university professor, poet, humanist, honorary doctor of literature. Vice President of “Doctors Against Nuclear War” (an institution awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985). ekahan@post.tau.ac.il<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Jun 2025 – From Enlightened Liberty to Global Double Standards – The American and French revolutions not only transformed political power but also set in motion a radical shift in how human beings understand themselves within society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":165128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[276,3503,328,260,520,1496,307,1731,2366,171],"class_list":["post-297176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-democracy","tag-double-standards","tag-freedom","tag-history","tag-human-behaviors","tag-humanism","tag-humanity","tag-left-politics","tag-liberalism","tag-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297177,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297176\/revisions\/297177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}