liberalism state objectives

Question 1

what are the objectives of the liberal state?

Answer 1

• promotion of natural rights
• equal opportunities, unequal outcomes
• promotion of tolerance

Question 2

why do liberals promote natural rights?

Answer 2

• the main objective of a liberal state is to improve upon rights that individuals enjoyed in the state of nature- notably the right to lige, liberty, property, and the persuit of self-fufilment
• Rawls therefore endorsed the idea that liberalism is ‘state-sponsered individualism’
• furthermore, if the state is structured in a certain way, it can allow individuals to enjoy their natural rights more easily than in the state of nature. as locke conceded, the state of nature would still involve clashes of self-interest, by contrast the liberal state would offer faster and fairer methods of resolution

Question 3

why do liberals promote equal opportunities, unequal outcomes?

Answer 3

• one of the chief justifications for a liberal state is its capacity to provide everyone with equal opportunities for self-fufilment. as T.H Green and Rawls argued, the liberal state must evolve to counter new threats to individual liberty
• however liberals will be far less concerned with equality of outcome. liberals, like Rawls, argue that, while equality of opportunity should be persued, inequality of outcome is the inevitable and desirable consequence of individualistic diversity
• consequently, the liberal state will strive to enable equal opportunity while allowing a meritocratic inequality of outcome

Question 4

why do liberals promote tolerance?

Answer 4

• liberal states aim to promote tolerance through its laws and institutions.
• JSM claimed that education was another vital way in which greater tolerance could be encouraged. but T.H Green argued that only the state could ensure the universal education required by a tolerant society
  -friedan argued that the state’s role in promoting tolerance should be extended further, so as to illegalise racial and sexual discrimination. Friedan also believed that a more tolerant society could by ‘pscychologically embeddded’ by the state