[einhverfr]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc77gn1 for starters.

If we understand Liberalism to be a social philosophy tradition starting with Hobbes, being further developed in various forms through Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, John Rawls, etc. and seeking the liberation of the individual from culture, community, and family then for various the social Liberalism of the democrats (which seeks particularly to liberate people sexually from community judgments and rules) is closely connected to the efforts by the GOP to do the same for people in the business area. They are based on a common view of what it means to be human, a particular view of what freedom is, and so forth.

These assumptions are not really so fundamentally shared outside North America. So in both Sweden and Denmark, society looks a lot more like it did structurally to Aristotle than to Hobbes -- strong family households joining together in local communities to address common issues. Those local communities joining together into larger and larger units to address common needs until you have the overall kingdom. These places are less individualist and more localist.

Growing up in small towns in the US, I can also tell you that this Business Liberalism is most heavily a force politically in the urban centers of the GOP. Rural politicians don't tend to push it in the same way.

[FabHK]

1) I would not include Rousseau among the fathers, but among the enemies of Liberalism.

2) I think the discourse in the USA has been heavily tilted in favour of libertarianism (maybe what you call "Business Liberalism") by concerted subversive effort sponsored by Koch, Mercer, etc., as outlined eg in the book Dark Money by Jane Mayer.

[einhverfr]

Rousseau certainly had an interesting relationship to the rise of Liberalism. And I am often unsure of whether to count him among the developers or enemies of the movement. I can read him both ways.

Your second point is I think correct on part of the problem but I think there is a second deeper issue which goes beyond dark money per se and implicates everyone. That is the fact that family and community are support structures which each of us rely on during hard times. If you come from a wealthy family and you really screw up repeatedly you will still probably do better than if you come from a poor family and do everything perfectly. But the family support structures have been under constant and sustained attacks on a number of means on the idea that if we undermine the family we will, for example, liberate women from inequality (in truth, it only increases gender inequality because motherhood has heavier burdens as single motherhood). Undermining the family, however, creates larger markets for a lot of things. A larger number of smaller households consume more. So business steps in to fill the role, as does the state. Moreover if you liberate business from the state and from community, then the first thing it will attack is the family and the reproductive order because it isn't very efficient for employees to have and raise kids (better to import kids after they grow up).

So I actually see the sexual liberalism of the progressive left and the business liberalism of the Koch brothers as mutually reinforcing, as politically heretical as that might be in the context of US political discussions.