19th century neoclassical liberalism () In the late 19th century,
the rise of social liberalism, championed by
Thomas Hill Green, sparked a division within the liberal movement. On one side were the social liberals (also known as welfare liberals), who advocated for a more interventionist state and
social justice based approach. On the other side, a faction of liberals remained committed to
laissez-faire economics.
Even in the face of industrialization, neoclassical liberals contended that their understanding of liberalism, as outlined by the British philosopher John Locke in his
Second Treatise of Government of 1690, remained the most effective approach for addressing social and economic concerns. After
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
New Deal (1933–1944), which contributed to the expansion of the welfare state in the United States, economists such as
Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) and
Milton Friedman (1912–2006) began to reintroduce neoclassical liberal policies as alternatives to Roosevelt's social liberalism. The
U.S. libertarian movement of the late 20th century is seen as a successor to neoclassical liberalism. or "
bleeding-heart libertarians", The first known use of the term "Arizona School" was by
Andrew Sabl, introducing David Schmidtz at a UCLA Department Colloquium in 2012. Upon being pressed to define "Arizona School" Sabl said the school is broadly libertarian but that its most distinguishing characteristic is that it produces political philosophy that aims to be observation-based and empirically accountable. The first recorded use of the term
bleeding-heart libertarian seems to have been in a 1996 essay by
Roderick T. Long. It was subsequently used in a
blog post by Stefan Sharkansky and later picked up and elaborated on by
Arnold Kling in an article for
TCS Daily. Since then, the term has been used sporadically by a number of libertarian writers including
Anthony Gregory and
Bryan Caplan. In March 2011, a group of academic philosophers, political theorists and economists created the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog. Regular contributors to the blog included
Fernando Tesón,
Gary Chartier,
Jason Brennan, Matt Zwolinski, Roderick T. Long, and
Steven Horwitz. Economist
David D. Friedman has been critical of the movement, stating that bleeding-heart libertarians "...insist that social justice ought to be part of libertarianism but are unwilling to tell us what it means." On 1 June 2020, co-founder Matt Zwolinski announced in a post titled "The End" that the Bleeding Heart Libertarians website would cease publishing new material. Zwolinski wrote that the blog’s "initial mission of publicizing the connection between free markets and social justice has been largely accomplished," adding that the archive would remain online so researchers and readers could continue to consult past entries, but that no further posts would appear.
Reason magazine reported that "one of the most influential libertarian blogs on the internet has come to an end," while noting that most of the site’s contributors planned to keep writing for other outlets. Zwolinski later argued that, contrary to the blog’s early hopes, discourse around the nexus of free markets and social justice had actually regressed, as
alt-right rhetoric increasingly crowded out libertarian perspectives. Describing this trend as a "deterioration," he relaunched the project in 2023 on the
Substack platform as a solo newsletter under the same banner, The Bleeding Heart Libertarian. == See also ==