Talk:Liberalism in the United States

Capital punishment
After reading that under social liberalism, "the common good [is] considered as compatible with or superior to the freedom of the individual", I found myself wondering why capital punishment, which is justified by considering the common good superior to the freedom of the individual being thus punished, is conservative rather than liberal. Some goal or value is missing from the delineation, because none of the ones given would lead one to oppose rather than support capital punishment. Philgoetz (talk) 02:50, 5 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Capital punishment is punishment. There is no evidence that it prevents crime. Capital punishment is favored by those who want to hurt people they consider bad. Rick Norwood (talk) 09:49, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * "There is no evidence that it prevents crime." As far as I know, it never did. As with any other laws with the explicit intention to intimidate. There are several centuries of data about its ineffectiveness. Dimadick (talk) 10:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

History: Rousseau versus American liberalism
There's something fundamentally wrong here: The article strives to discriminate American liberalism from European liberalism, but attributes belief in "the common good" to American liberalism. "The common good" however, comes from Rousseau, made the difference between the American and French Revolutions, and has always been diagnostic of European thought. The liberalism in America, by the time of the Revolution, was based on a different conception of "the common good" than European liberalism. American liberals have until quite recently believed that, at the policy level, there is no such thing as a "common good". They believed that even good people have conflicting interests, and the purpose of government is to referee the development of a compromise between competing interests. So by identifying the "common good" with American liberalism, this article in effect says that American liberalism has been supplanted by European liberalism. Philgoetz (talk) 03:08, 5 July 2023 (UTC)


 * There are a number of strange statements above, particularly the idea that "American liberals have until quite recently believed that, at the policy level, there is no such thing as a "common good"." Jefferson changed Locke's "property" to "the pursuit of happiness", certainly happiness is a common good. The preamble to the constitution gives one reason for government to "promote the general welfare", certainly a common good. The big difference between European use of the word liberalism and the American use has to do with economic freedom in the European usage with some limitations on the concentration and power of wealth in the American usage. Rick Norwood (talk) 09:55, 5 July 2023 (UTC)