"How Liberalism Was Understood In the Early Days"

 
?How Liberalism Was Understood In the Early Days In the days of fascism and socialism, liberal democracy was seen as a corruption of the society. These were the days when racial purity was regarded a very significant determinant in the success of a nation or state. Yet, liberal democracy was seen as way to allow all sorts of people to have the same rights as everyone. Under the early social orders such as socialism, any foreigners and especially those who came from races which were considered to be inferior, could not have equal rights as the other people. This was not going to be the same under liberal democracy. Liberal democracy also threatened the national unity because under it, the individual would be able to live independent of the others. What the early people understood liberal democracy to be was that it would kill off the social cohesion emanating from the other forms of social orders such as the fascism and socialism. According to Lecture Notes (5), fascism is a system of government that is led by an authoritarian regime where the society was held by the leadership of a central authority. In this regard, liberal democracy was seen as a way to corrupt the nation where people will be separated from each other. Under socialism governments, leaders and even citizens were inclined to social orders which were seen to promote collaboration and the management of the nation as a single unit where the good of one individual was the interest of everyone. The fact that liberal democracy sought to support the rights of the independence of the individual and especially the protect the rights of the various minorities was also another issue. The fact that most industrial leaders in the early days thought that enterprise or industry of any kind needed the support of the government to succeed would be one of the reason why liberal democracy was not supported (Frieden, 65). They believed that the government had to own and control part of the industries in order for these industries to have success. As Nagell (65) says, before socialism and the division of labor, every part of the world would be economically independent and such a world would be difficult to rule. Socialism was a major hindrance to liberal democracy also because of a number of critical reasons. For instance, the very core and fundamental principle of socialism was in direct conflict with liberal democracy. Socialism was geared towards the common interest of the nation while liberal democracy was geared towards the individual rights of individual citizens. This alone made liberal democracy to look like a principle that would come to do away with the state and lead to the demolition of a cohesive nation. At the same time, socialism was geared towards a system of common ownership of property and the wealth of the nation while liberal democracy was geared towards helping individuals to make their own wealth. At a time when liberal democracy had not been practiced anywhere, this looked scary band threatening not only to the government that would have preferred to have a socialist society that was easier to govern, but also to individuals who thought that the socialist order was better for them. In this regard, liberal democracy, even for those who doubted whether socialism was a good system, was the angel they did not know. Because of this, they preferred to have the socialism they knew its negatives and positives rather than try a system that they did not understand.