Liberal, Libertarian, Liberation

Do you find any contradiction in your assertion that the LIBERAtion movement opposed LIBERAlism? Yes, they are etymologically related. But they are mutually antagonistic. Liberalism came first, implementing capitalism and overthrowing an existing order based on landed gentry. But it did so on behalf of a social class dominated by white men with money. Its program ruthlessly exploited colonial populations and rejected political participation by women and the laboring classes. (Their original theorist was John Locke, 1632-1704.) This gave rise to liberation movements on behalf of those liberalism excluded -- women, wage workers, sexual deviants, colonial populations. Gradually liberalism granted these groups rights to at least some political participation, though mostly without surrendering actual political control. (The first key theorist here was John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873.) Liberation movements leveraged what participation in the political process they were able to achieve to implement reforms, like a 40-hour work week. Mostly these were government strictures on how capitalism could operate. Libertarianism arose last, in opposition to limitations placed on liberalism by liberation movements. Figures like Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and Ayn Rand sought a return to liberalism's original Lockean roots. Though libertarians follow Mill in rejecting the exclusions that characterized early liberalism, they also reject most of the restrictions on the "free" operations of markets that governments implemented in response to liberation movements. That's my rough schema of it anyway, for what it's worth. hugzu ;-p