What is "Classical Liberalism"?
Classical Liberalism is a political stance. For a really good understanding of Classical Liberalism, the best thing to do is to read the historic defences of what we now call classical liberalism. The most important author is the man sometimes called the father of classical liberalism, John Locke. Essentially, Classical Liberalism was a rejection of the view that the state or the monarch should have total authority over the lives of its citizens. This power belongs only to God. By contrast, the government should have very limited powers over its citizens. People should be seen, basically, as free and equal, with a right to use their property as they see fit. This is because all people have been created equal, and the government has no God given right to demand whatever it likes, but only what God has allowed them to do as the protector of the basic rights and liberties God has bestowed upon us. The government therefore may not arbitrarily intrude upon the lives and property of its citizens. The role of the state is to uphold the public good, which means protecting its citizens from force, fraud and corruption at the hands of other citizens, or foreign aggressors. In practice this has all kinds of far reaching implications for New Zealand and other nations today. It means that the government has no right to tax its people to pay for state schools. I own my money, and it is my responsibility to see that my children are educated. I should therefore be allowed to choose how I use my resources to ensure my children are educated. It means the government has no right to determine which moral opinions are allowed to be aired, and which must be censored as hate speech. I can make up my own mind who has strong arguments for their position and who does not. It means that the government is acting wrongly when it taxes nearly half of your income, and when it celebrates over the fact that it has a surplus that it is going to spend on its own pet projects. You earned your money, you should be allowed to enjoy it, and if the government discovers it has taken too much and it has a surplus, it should apologise and give it back! It means the government cannot just cave in to popular pressure and give special rights and protections to groups who want it (e.g. funding for television shows that are too unpopular to meet their own costs, new "civil union" legislation for people who reject marriage but want special laws written for them to give them the rights of marriage, trade tariffs to protect local industries that are not efficient enough to compete on their own, and the list goes on).
Oh. So you're a Libertarian?
No. Modern "libertarianism" is loosely connected with classical liberalism, but it is really an offshoot of the historic position. For a lot of contemporary libertarians, the only moral foundation for the political vision is the value of liberty in and of itself, or perhaps there is no moral foundation, simply a personal love of liberty. Hence, any intrusion of the state into what people want to do is suspect, unless those individuals' actions would interfere at all with the liberty of others. While this is obviously very similar to classical liberalism's emphasis on limited government, the basic difference is here: In Classical liberalism, there is an undergirding rationale for civil liberty other than a personal preference for things like liberty and equality, namely the ordained role of the state to uphold the "law of nature" or the public good (See our articles section for a discussion of the Classical Liberal concept of natural law). Classical liberals cannot be libertarians, any more than they could be socialists. But we do welcome input from libertarians, provided it coincides with Classical liberalism, as it sometimes does.
Some of your articles on Classical Liberalism, as well as some of you links mention Christianity or God. Why is that?
I'm a Christian, and so things related to Christianity interest me. Besides that, Classical Liberalism has its roots in religious thinking. In Particular, it is rooted in the Protestant Reformation. The rationale for Classical Liberalism was not simply that people like having liberty and therefore the government should sod off (after all, the government exists to do a lot more than just satisfy preferences). Rather, it was based on the fact that God has created humans with a certain dignity and value, and so they should be treated as equals (which is different from treating everybody equally, see here), and government is no more than a representative of a body of equals with a divinely ordained role. It also arose in a context where people believed in sin, and hence they knew that absolute power corrupts. The government was therefore not given absolute power.
No, you don't get the point. Some of the material on this site is REALLY religious, I mean, you almost sound like a nutter. In fact, you do. What gives?
I'm a Christian who has opinions, and unlike a lot of Christians who publicly talk about politics and social issues, I'm not in the lest bit concerned about people knowing that I'm a Christian or that I hold political views on the basis of my religious views. That's what gives. I also think theology is important, because if Christianity is true and the Bible is divine revelation, then good theology reflects the way things really are.
This all sounds a bit right wing to me. Is it?
That depends on who you ask. For some people, anything that's not left wing must be "right wing." For other people, "right wing" implies some sort of bigoted dictatorship in the vein of Nazi Germany (despite the ironic fact that the Nazi party was a socialist party). For the purposes of New Zealand Politics, classical liberalism has more in common with policies that people have come to call "right wing" rather than "left wing." The more accurate label however is "Classical Liberal." However, the way the term "liberal" has come to be used in the twentieth century to refer to left wing humanism has caused the language to be so confusing that it is often better not to use the label at all. In New Zealand the term "right wing" is often associated with the sale of state assets, with having restrictive immigration policy (and with any policy perceived to be racist), and a whole host of other things that may or may not be compatible with Classical Liberalism. Classical Liberalism's commitment is not to any particular policy or policies, but rather to certain key principles: limited powers of government, freedom of religion (although not unlimited), a generally free market, an emphasis on personal liberty, as discussed under question 1 - "What is Classical Liberalism?"
Is this website associated with any political parties, religious groups or businesses?
No. Not in any way, shape or form.