Cultural liberalism

Cultural liberalism is a liberal view of society that stresses the freedom of individuals from cultural norms. Some cultural liberals believe that society should not impose any specific code of behaviour, and they see themselves as defending the rights of non-conformists to express their own identity however they see fit.

The culture wars in modern American politics are usually drawn between cultural liberals and cultural conservatives. Cultural liberals argue that all religion(s) and forms of worship (or lack thereof) should be tolerated; they are strongly opposed to censorship or any kind of oversight of spoken or written material; they believe that the structure of one's family and the nature of marriage should be left up to individual decision, and they argue that no lifestyle is inherently better than any other.

Cultural liberalism is an element of social liberalism in number of countries. Social liberalism deals broadly with other issues such as health care, economy, etc.

References

Willard, Charles Arthur. Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy, University of Chicago Press, 1996.

This political science article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e