
What Does the Word “Liberal” Mean? - drjohnson
https://www.lawliberty.org/book-review/what-does-the-word-the-word-liberal-mean/
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cperciva
It gets even better in Canada: "neoliberal" and "neoconservative" are used
more or less interchangeably, and mean roughly the same thing as "classical
liberal", which is of course the exact opposite of the current Liberal party.

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tareqak
I think that the nation states.net 3-axis model is sufficient for plotting and
exploring political ideas for now [0]. It’s still better than the one-
dimensional left-right spectrum or the two-dimensional Nolan chart [1].
However, given the rate at which language changes, it seems completely
feasible that people might on day need a more granular political coordinate
system.

[0]
[https://www.nationstates.net/page=create_nation](https://www.nationstates.net/page=create_nation)

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart)

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inflatableDodo
D&D alignment works too -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_\(Dungeons_%26_Dragons\))

~~~
tareqak
How so? I don’t see how it compares political freedoms, personal freedoms, or
economic freedoms. Maybe there is a specific one for politics you know of?

~~~
inflatableDodo
I'd say it is complementary to the nation states three axis model. It doesn't
define someone's politics, it defines how they go about their politics and
what they proritise about their value system, which is generally just as
important to consider.

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goldcd
"When most Europeans hear the word “liberal” they think of Margaret Thatcher
and Ronald Reagan."

No. NO WE DO NOT. Irrespective of your views on Maggie - nobody considers her
a liberal..

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orf
Holy hell, I had to double check that quote. How can the authors get something
like that so absolutely wrong?

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inflatableDodo
Is the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect -
[https://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2011/08/the-
murray-g...](https://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2011/08/the-murray-gell-
mann-amnesia-effect/)

~~~
dingaling
No, it's the exact opposite. The original poster now has little confidence in
the authors and will in the future view their work with suspicion.

For all the times the MGMA is trotted out I don't think there is evidence that
it is actually common. It was just a theory proposed by an author with no
research or evidence. He discussed it with a colleague and then printed it as
'fact'. Perhaps it's actually a self-referential hoax...?

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tracker1
I think a lot of it is the extremes and secondary views adopted at either end.
I also think part of the problem is not recognizing the Statist/Individualist
part of the political spectrum. It isn't a slide rule, it's a map.

In the end, you have some very statist identitarian communists on the far
"left" and you have some statis nationalist racists on the far "right" ...
Most of the republicans are just right of center, 92% of democrats the same
(excluding the fringe 8%). The fringe right is a fraction of a percent. Anyone
who is outside of the left-most 20-30% is often called alt-right adjacent...
it's no wonder Trump is in office, and even more left leaning people think
they're right wing now.

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fwip
92% is an awful lot of precision.

~~~
tracker1
8% is considered the "Progressive Activists" or SJWs, they are definitely over
represented in media and the likes of twitter, but are definitely that. 92% is
the rest.

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ralusek
Liberal means the near opposite of leftism. In the US, and abroad, I think
that we are seeing a clear shift of the right wing factions towards
liberalism, away from conservatism and religion. Likewise, there is a
corresponding left wing shift towards Marxism. I personally think that is how
the political factions will be characterized over the next century.

I would characterize liberalism's tenets as:

1.) Universality under the law (not contextualized by identity)

2.) Focus on maximizing individual liberty and minimizing centralized
authority

3.) Laissez-faire focus on accountability. You reap what you sow

I would only differentiate a liberal from a libertarian in that a liberal is
just more likely to accept certain market failures as being better served by
the state. A liberal is more likely than a libertarian, for example, to
support anti-monopoly clauses, or heavy taxation or regulation of negative
third-party-externalities. But a liberal and libertarian are of the same ilk;
and value liberty as the primary virtue.

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irrational
Anything to the left of me is liberal, anything to the right of me is
conservative.

~~~
humanrebar
What does the word "left wing" mean?

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chimpburger
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-
wing_politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics)

~~~
humanrebar
A lack of Wikipedia articles isn't the problem:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal)

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nrook
I've always been curious if the internationalization of political discussion
was behind the changing definitions of the word "liberal" in US politics.

In the 1990s, "liberal" was used as a synonym of "leftist"; a "liberal"
politician would support expanding the welfare state, for example. My
understanding is that the European definition of "liberal" is different, and
implied a light touch in business affairs; the Economist is a "liberal"
publication.

In 2019, this definition has spread to the United States as well; members of
the Democratic Socialists of America don't identify as liberal. The European
definition is only used in some circles: conservatives tend to stick to the
old definition, and would describe somebody like Bernie Sanders as "liberal".
I was always curious if this was because US political activists were talking
to European ones on sites like Twitter, or Internet forums before it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I've always been curious if the internationalization of political discussion
> was behind the changing definitions of the word "liberal" in US politics.

No.

> In the 1990s, "liberal" was used as a synonym of "leftist"

The early 1990s was the height of what was then referred to as the “neoliberal
consensus” in US politics, and the liberal in neoliberal is exactly the same
sense you are trying to sell as uniquely European (but which is really just
economic.)

> In 2019, this definition has spread to the United States as well; members of
> the Democratic Socialists of America don't identify as liberal.

The DSA has been around for a long time, and it's members have never
identified as liberal. “Liberal” was only ever equated with “Leftist” in
conservative propaganda. Though for a long time in the US, both the major
parties were dominated by economic liberals, so economic liberals that were
socially liberal were “liberals” and economic liberals that were socially
conservative were “conservatives”.

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madhadron
This has already been flagged, but a few points for those who may stumble upon
it: the author is a professor at a wingnut, for-profit Christian college that
primarily grants online, non-accredited certificates. So when he writes,

> The substantive problem is the bias Rosenblatt brings to her story of
> liberalism.

we need to look at the other possibility: Rosenblatt is dismantling the
tradition, central to the author's personal mythology, of liberalism in the
Anglo world being the primary thread of that idea. The book he quotes to claim
that it is not so is another piece by a professor at Hillsdale College.

When you go look at the work they have produced, it becomes pretty clear.
Rosenblatt has been working on this issue for a long time, and has a paper
trail to show it. If you look at Schleuter's CV, you a minor PhD dissertation
on Martin Luther King and...that's about it.

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otakucode
Both Liberal and Conservative are really loaded words. Not necessarily loaded
in the emotional sense (although they are often that), but just in terms of
being used with very different definitions in very different places. I
listened to an audiobook or a lecture series a few years ago that discussed
the idea of Liberalism that I found very interesting. Rather than dealing with
any of the modern senses of the terms Conservative or Liberal, it dealt with
the sea change in types of governance that occurred at the end of the
Enlightenment with the rise of the United States and the French Revolution.

It takes a bit of doing for modern people to even conceive of what the actual
argument was at the time. To really understand that both the rulers and the
citizenry viewed rulers as fundamentally Better People in some way (often
granted by God) is a mindset that modern people just aren't accustomed to.
They read 'all men are created equal' and they don't realize what it's even
talking about. The idea that citizens who are being ruled should have some say
in how they are ruled was the essence of Liberalism in that time. It was a
revolutionary idea and seen as stupid by many. Thomas Payne's 'Common Sense'
was published at a time when the phrase 'common sense' was a perjorative. It
referred to the 'sense' of commoners, implying that it was worthless and
senseless. Commoners simply weren't built to be able to understand notions of
governance or to be able to wield power without self destruction.

Just as racism and sexism proposed that there were "different kinds" of people
who inherently bore different capabilities, setting one group or another apart
and making them unsuited to certain pursuits, Conservatism held that the
divide between ruler and ruled was of this nature as well. A natural fact,
emerging either from direct divine edict or carried in bloodlines, that made
it ludicrous to even suggest that perhaps the peasant should have something
like a 'vote.'

Liberalism won quite conclusively. After the American Revolution and French
Revolution, revolutions flourished all over the world. While Ancient Greece
debuted democracy, it had died out for a long while and at the time every
single nation on the planet was ruled by a Conservative government built
around the idea of inherent superiority of the rulers. I can't imagine what it
must have been like to live in those time periods, growing up knowing to your
bones that you're simply a follower and a subject, liable to be called upon to
have your concerns or life spent by the crown for their own purposes, and
knowing that you simply weren't capable of questioning their motives or
techniques. And then, that some people emerged who made arguments about the
philosophical basis of government which was able to persuade this population
to rise up and kill their own country so that they might build one of their
own based upon this utterly heretical notion that there really aren't any
Special People born to rule... it's dizzying to consider.

Those that remain dedicated to an idea of a return to this sort of
Conservatism, and there are some, walk in step with eugenicists and should be
feared.

