Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on the ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas such as free and fair elections, rights, freedom, freedom of religion, free trade, and a right to life, liberty, and property. Liberalism rejected the notions, common at the time, of hereditary privilege, state religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings.
John Locke is often credited with founding liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition. Locke argued that each man has a natural right to life, liberty and property and according to the social contract governments must not violate these rights. Liberals opposed traditional conservatism and sought to replace absolutism in government with democracy and the rule of law. The revolutionaries in the American Revolution, the French Revolution and other liberal revolutions from that time used liberal philosophy to justify the armed overthrow of what they saw as tyrannical rule. lassical liberalism became less popular and gave way to social democracy and social liberalism. In the United States liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal program of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and laissez-faire economic policies.  the first modern state founded on liberal principles, with no hereditary aristocracy, was The United States of America, whose Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” echoing John Locke’s phrase “life, liberty, and property”. A few years later, the French Revolution overthrew the hereditary aristocracy, with the slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity”, and was the first state in history to grant universal male suffrage.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, first codified in 1789 in France, is a foundational document of both liberalism and human rights. The Enlightenment, which challenged tradition, eventually coalesced into powerful revolutionary movements that toppled archaic regimes all over the world, especially in Europe, Latin America, and North America. Liberalism fully exploded as a comprehensive movement against the old order during the French Revolution, which set the pace for the future development of human history.