“Liberal” and “libertarian” both derive from liber “free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious.” In much of Europe today, “liberal” is associated with free markets, which is associated with conservatism. It can be very confusing, and so I’ve stopped using the term “liberal” as the general term.
As a technical term, when you’re talking among educated people, you can use “liberal,” but for a general non-technical sense, I’ve started using “progressive” to describe myself lately. Another good word is “left” or “left wing”, but I think progressive catches the essence of the idea better.
I think unrestricted freedom is sort of a nutty idea, and so the original sense of the root word matches the nutty libertarians better, anyways.
As a technical term, when you’re talking among educated people, you can use “liberal,”
Not ‘round these-here parts. People get really mad at “liberals”. Which I find ridiculous, but then I’m a libcuck Dem apologist genosider. Or so I’ve been told.
By russian-sponsored trolls you ask? Nnnnno?
Liberalism is a specific ideology, and it’s the dominant one in the world today. People around here have very good and often well-articulated reasons for disliking liberalism.
*points to OP*
disliking things like rules-based world order and voting?
What reasons would illiberal ideologies have to be against that? Nationalism? Opportunistic cronyism?
“Rules-based” world order in liberalism tends to end up with some countries breaking the rules and facing no consequences (see the unilateral veto power of the permanent members of the UN security council).
Liberalism also endorses things like private property, which allows an ownership class that extracts value from others without creating it.
I wouldn’t call people Russian trolls for having a different definition of the word “liberal” than you. Most online leftists use the term “liberal” to refer to bourgeoisie that support, intentionally or unintentionally, mega-corporations and patriotic nationalism.
Most online leftists use the term “liberal” to refer to bourgeoisie
So they’re not Americans.
Which is fair enough, but maybe then they could not be all up in every thread about American elections? Because they don’t understand them very well?
A little off topic, but don’t we all just want a society that works for its members? We look at the world and at history to see which types of political parties were able to create situations that worked.
A little off topic, but don’t we all just want a society that works for its members?
The problem is, for conservatives, only a small fraction of people count as people.
Awesome crop
If you click the Accessibility icon in the right margin it’ll fix everything
OK, but I guess I’m not using the same UI that you are.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your husband threw 100,000 Americans in concentration camps, Eleanor.
What do you think Eleanor had to do with it?
Would you stay married to a person who threw 100,000 innocent people into concentration camps? I wouldn’t. Given this quote, it doesn’t appear that Eleanor practices what she preaches.
Id go as far as to say FDR was an objectively worse person than McCarthy. Communism is a choice. Japanese descent is not. Blacklisting, while horrible, is not as bad as having your property seized and being thrown in a concentration camp.
Know a lot about marriage in 1942? Or Eleanor Roosevelt?
Know a lot about marriage in 1942?
I know that the US lead the world in number of divorces as early as 1916
Or Eleanor Roosevelt?
I know that quote makes her a huge fucking hypocrite if she stayed married to a man who seized the property of 100,000 innocent people and sent them to concentration camps
in statesia women could not have bank accounts without male cosigners until 1974
Eleanor Roosevelt was substantially richer than her husband, and became a UN delegate in 1945. She would have been fine. This isn’t a woman who would have ended up eating cat food, even back then.
Well, when time changes your mind, it’s okay.
You are arguing with someone that thinks Obama and Bush are the exact same.
Time is never going to convince me that throwing 100,000 American citizens in concentration camps was anything other than horrendous and unforgivable.
It won’t, but you might develop some new insights about marriage or Eleanor Roosevelt.
She was famously influential in his presidency
So you think she was behind it eh. Despite the lack of any evidence and the contrary evidence everywhere?
https://www.history.com/articles/eleanor-roosevelts-work-to-oppose-japanese-internment
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
- Frank Wilhoit, American Composer, ca. 2018
Conservative / Liberal divide was aimed at the fiscal side of things. Fiscally Conservative being less about spending and focus more on the national debt and liberal being more take a loan and invest the money.
Wikipedia told me how wrong I was just now and it’s more aimed towards maintaining the status quo in relation to a certain period in time. In Western democracies often means protecting organised religion, nuclear family, property rights, rule of law etc.
So it’s more of an umbrella term for people who don’t want to change anything or even bring back some previous state.
Andrew Heywood’s book “The Conservative Mind” from 1953 denotes it as
-
A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
-
An affection for the “variety and mystery” of human existence;
-
A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize natural distinctions;
-
A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
-
A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and a recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence
With all that said it’s a pretty garbage political philosophy and pretty regressive.
it’s a pretty garbage political philosophy and pretty regressive.
In my opinion, Wilhoit boiled away the justification of authoritarians of any ilk and refined their ethos in the following 3 sentences:
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been.
“I’m/We’re in charge. Forever. I/We don’t need a reason. You also have to like it too, or else I’ll/We’ll kill you.”
From Stalin, to Mao, to Hitler, to Putin, to Xi Jingping, to Trump, to
<insertDouchebagBulliesHere>, it’s the same rule. “We run shit because fuck you.”I won’t pretend to know the proper response to that, but the most satisfying one to me is, “Go fuck yourself forever!”.
I do see the appeal of conservatism in so far as valuing stability more than “rocking the boat.” I’ve also come to realise that traditions could bind people. I think the problem of liberalism is the value on individualism, which is something that liberals fail to recognise as the blindspot that led to the rise of fascism. The liberal “going your own way” and “think for yourself” attitude that permeated onto the global culture for decades, led to alienation and loneliness epidemic. This loneliness and vulnerability is exploited by the far right. The far right offered a community and a sense of belonging, albeit in toxic dark ways. That’s not to say that the far right has monopoly on group cohesion, the far left especially communists and anarchists offer group membership, but at the moment, the fascist far right claim the group refuge for those who aren’t maverick inclined, so to speak. At least some on the left recognise this failure, and started to also offer a sense of group membership and camaraderie.
-
Great message, but the cropping of this image is frustrating and offensive.
It’s a metaphor.
For, um. . . . Something.
Oooh… because Eleanor was badly cut and faded, like this:
“Liberal” today is about the free flow of money from the masses to the rich, while avoiding the tax man.
No. It isn’t. Not for Americans. And people here use it wrong on purpose and it’s kind of infuriating.
Yes, you can use it that way if you’re a political scientist, a radical Marxist, or a teen.
Yes, other countries use it that way.
If you’re saying American liberals want the masses to have their money flow to the rich while avoiding the tax man you’re wrong.
Would you consider Obama a liberal? Because the ACA was literally designed to funnel tax money to his big-dollar donors in the private sector.
And lol “a political scientist, a Marxist, and a teen walk into a bar…” What an utterly incoherent perspective jfc
Would you consider Clinton a liberal?
The Clinton health care plan of 1993, colloquially referred to as Hillarycare, was an American healthcare reform package proposed by the Clinton administration and closely associated with the chair of the task force devising the plan, first lady Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton had campaigned heavily on health care in the 1992 presidential election. The task force was created in January 1993, but its own processes were somewhat controversial and drew litigation. Its goal was to come up with a comprehensive plan to provide universal health care for all Americans, which was to be a cornerstone of the administration’s first-term agenda. President Clinton delivered a major health care speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on September 22, 1993, during which he proposed an enforced mandate for employers to provide health insurance coverage to all of their employees.
Hey, Optional is alright. I don’t agree with them in this instance, but I know them from other conversations, and they are not the enemy.
American Liberalism is the origins of “the left”
Liberals are handmaids to fascists
Dicks are assholes to fuckwits.
Lol sure buddy sure.
Gutted
How about, democratic socialist? Or progressive. If more people bothered to learn what any of that meant I think they would find themselves aligning more with that.
Does that help win elections? If so, let’s do it.
I mean, I don’t think any single handed action will automatically win elections. However I do think finding some clarity in the left and what they stand for is incredibly important. I think it’s fair to say the majority of the left care about human rights, universal healthcare, livable wages, affordable housing, groceries, and childcare. Last but not least, the environment. But the represented democrats haven’t actually represented those values, so it’s tarnished the name. I truly believe the younger progressives are the ones that will fight for these policies at a minimum. Personally, I’ll add the high speed rail and public transport/trains/busses to that list tenfold. P.S. go Zohran!
Liberals having a good ol’ days moment? Beats standing up to actually existing and unfolding fascism, ig.
the post is about liberalism, not liberals
Beats standing up to actually existing and unfolding fascism, ig.
buddy we’re all on the internet
