Honors Theses

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Completion

5-2025

Academic Year

2024-2025

Department

Interdisciplinary

Academic Major

Interdisciplinary Studies

Faculty Advisor

Liann Gallagher, Ph.D.

Faculty Advisor

Nathaniel Wiewora, Ph.D.

Abstract

At Harding University, and in broader American political discourse, liberalism has been contorted from a prolific political philosophy into a meaningless misnomer. This paper studies what liberalism is to define what it isn't, by building a foundation of understanding in both modern theorists, like Sheldon Wolin, Alan Ryan, and Ian Adams, and the seminal works of classical liberal thinkers such as Locke, Tocqueville and Mill. Next, I deploy a self-designed survey, consisting of 4 passages derived from the literature written by those above. 80 Harding students responded, and their responses were gathered into SPSS, a data processing software, and ran through a logit regression. The results of this data analysis support the claim that students at Harding cannot identify liberalism by its original connotations. With this startling fact in view, this paper posits the best remedy to the malady of America's perception of liberalism is a renewed interest in civic education.

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