Racial tolerance is a liberal idea.
The sovereignty of the nation-state, which implies that authority comes from "the nation" and is therefore ultimately popular in origin rather than from God, is a liberal idea.
Racial tolerance is not, in itself, a liberal idea. Equality for all of the races, classes, individuals, genders, and "citizens" before the law, however, is a liberal idea. You have good instincts on a lot of points, TraditionalGuy, but you need to temper your zeal with more patience and study. For instance, just because the Marxists criticise the middle class does not mean that criticising the middle class is Marxist. The old aristocracy and peasants were also critical of the middle class because they saw them as avaricious and soft urban parasites or else merchants who manipulated money and goods for their own profit without producing anything. But obviously the champions of the natural order, the counter-revolutionary aristocrats and peasants, are not Marxists.
Liberalism derives from the worldview of the so-called Enlightenment, which in themselves have Newtonian mechanics and esoteric Freemasonic individualism as their template. Both of these "schools" found fertile ground in Protestant nations since the Protestants were proud individualists who thought of themselves as saved member of the elect who would bow before no man. Protestantism seems to have made such advances in the Northern European countries because of, on the one hand, their climate that facilitated development of a powerful merchant class that eventually had the resources to dominate the organs of civil power and, on the other hand, their apparent distaste for the Mediterranean family model dominated by the patriarch of the household and clan. Where this cultural preference comes from I have been unable to pin down; in any case, ideas are nothing until believed and acted upon by men. This is how Liberalism was able to spread to Europe, through the Anglophile middle class of discontented Jansenists, Gallicans, and Freemasons -- lawyers, merchants, etc. -- in France, which spread it through conquest under the direction of Napoleon.
It goes deeper, still. For instance, I am critical of the idea of "civilisation" because I am critical of the idea that urban life and manners makes one superiour to others, since it excludes virtue and grace from the equation of law. If law is not ultimately based on fear of authority and upon justice, of what value is it ? The Enlightenment has roots in the Renaissance, and the Renaissance has roots in the education and ambitions of the denizens of the Italian merchant republics, whose cutthroat avarice blossomed in contest against Popes and clerics.
I could write more about this later. Suffice it to say, if we do not understand where we have been, we cannot know where we are going, nor where we ought to go.
Topic: There is a common misconception about what liberalism really is... (Read 1480 times)