The aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.

The ancient Greeks, despite their belief in fate, regarded the individual citizen as possessing moral agency and as a vital participant in the city-state, or polis. Thus, the Greeks were the first to break ranks with the accepted model of government — the monarchy — and chart a path toward demokratia, government by consent. The idea of individual

This liberalism relies upon the idea that consciousness is not a thing but an activity; that its elemental constituent is not some soul-like substance but the activity of understanding; that it knows itself and the world only imperfectly, through its reflections on the world and itself; that its freedom is a matter of degree and a function of its

In the early 18th century, hundreds of the Amish flocked to North America. Back in 1681, William Penn, an English Quaker based in the United States, conducted what he called a “holy experiment.” Penn was the majority landowner of a substantial piece of land, now known as the state of Pennsylvania. He welcomed colonies from different religious