Wtf do you people think “liberal” means? Some people think it means communist, some think it means socialist, some somehow think it means fascist. I’d love to what you actually mean when you use a word that has a specific meaning of “anti-authoritarian”.
…the derogatory connotation is much weaker in the UK than in the US, and social liberals from both the left and right wing continue to use liberal and illiberal to describe themselves and their opponents, respectively.
Is it possible, that in the rest of the world, many partys call themselves liberal and after ages of conservative governments calling themselves liberal, many people in the UK have not heard “the left” call themselves liberal?
It may also be far too general of a term to be of value.
It may also be far too general of a term to be of value.
This is my main complaint. We humans love putting things in little categories and labels, but if you’re using a word that you think means X and everyone else thinks it means Y or Z then suddenly we’re all taking at cross purposes and everyone thinks everyone else is chatting shit.
Liberalism is also pro social freedom. We should specify economically or socially liberal, depending on the political party it may be a different percentage of each.
In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won’t revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.
Social Welfare is neither historically nor currently a liberal value.
Generally the idea seems to be social liberalism, e.g. people should laregely do what they want, and since a few decades bastardized with neoliberal economics, which are the opposite of freedom. E.g. ideas like reinstating slavery, selling children, murdering people with impunity all based on an arbitrary freedom of contracts.
American liberals are far right conservative/reactionaries sprinkled with some gay rights by most countries standards.
Firstly, thanks for actually giving me an answer! Secondly, that sounds insane, I’ve never heard any definition of “liberal” that means that, though I have heard that the USA just has their own completely different definition of the word. For instance in Britain the term “liberal democracy” is used to mean “not a dictatorship”. Language is about communication, assuming everyone uses your own pejorative definition of a word is not good for discussion!
Hey OP, just in case you didn’t gather this from the various other comments, in political science, Liberalism refers to a specific movement (think John Locke, social contract theory, abolishing various aristocratic privilaeges, etc) but can be applied to modern political philosophies too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Liberalism in media terms often means something quite different depending where you are in the world. But, it typically refers to something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism. Pro-market, pro-welfare (to a limited degree), somewhat focused on individual freedoms, etc. It’s a wide-ranging term and can cover anything from as far right as America’s gov’t to as far left as something like Sweden’s.
As far as I can tell, it seems to be a catch all for “people I don’t like”. There’s no real meaning and often times the same commentor describes conflicting idealogies as liberal.
I think there is 2+1 different uses on American forums:
economically liberal: support free (libre) market
socially liberal: support social progressiveness, like human rights, workers rights, freedom from church interference in personal life, women rights and LGBTQ more recently.
American politics liberal: whatever Democrats party supports.
In the 18th century (maybe until Marx?), most people who were economically liberal, were also socially liberal, it was a general movement for more freedom everywhere at the same time.
But now both notions are spread differently along the political spectrum. You have far left who is socially liberal but against free market, you have traditional right who are socially conservative but pro free market, populist right who are social conservative and mildly against free market because they just bundle the most demagogic subject together as a Frankenstein program to get votes, and you have social democrats who defend free market with social progressiveness to compensate for the negative side effects.
![[Hot Paper Comics] Well now I hate you for new reasons](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/bb8fe82f-d235-41e6-832f-6196e0827d84.jpeg){kind=link}
Wtf do you people think “liberal” means? Some people think it means communist, some think it means socialist, some somehow think it means fascist. I’d love to what you actually mean when you use a word that has a specific meaning of “anti-authoritarian”.
The word “liberal” is associated with the right everywhere except the US.
I think you meant neo-liberal.
I hear this a lot, so I dug a bit. What do others think?
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_Kingdom
Is it possible, that in the rest of the world, many partys call themselves liberal and after ages of conservative governments calling themselves liberal, many people in the UK have not heard “the left” call themselves liberal?
It may also be far too general of a term to be of value.
This is my main complaint. We humans love putting things in little categories and labels, but if you’re using a word that you think means X and everyone else thinks it means Y or Z then suddenly we’re all taking at cross purposes and everyone thinks everyone else is chatting shit.
The fuck? No
Liberalism is pro-Capitalism, therefore it’s right wing.
Liberalism is also pro social freedom. We should specify economically or socially liberal, depending on the political party it may be a different percentage of each.
Liberal means centre-right to right in most of Europe, and right-wing in much of the rest of the world.
I was already contented with the fact that people here were going to circlejerk themselves into this.
In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won’t revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.
Social Welfare is neither historically nor currently a liberal value.
Generally the idea seems to be social liberalism, e.g. people should laregely do what they want, and since a few decades bastardized with neoliberal economics, which are the opposite of freedom. E.g. ideas like reinstating slavery, selling children, murdering people with impunity all based on an arbitrary freedom of contracts.
American liberals are far right conservative/reactionaries sprinkled with some gay rights by most countries standards.
Isn’t that American “libertarians”?
Firstly, thanks for actually giving me an answer! Secondly, that sounds insane, I’ve never heard any definition of “liberal” that means that, though I have heard that the USA just has their own completely different definition of the word. For instance in Britain the term “liberal democracy” is used to mean “not a dictatorship”. Language is about communication, assuming everyone uses your own pejorative definition of a word is not good for discussion!
Hey OP, just in case you didn’t gather this from the various other comments, in political science, Liberalism refers to a specific movement (think John Locke, social contract theory, abolishing various aristocratic privilaeges, etc) but can be applied to modern political philosophies too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Liberalism in media terms often means something quite different depending where you are in the world. But, it typically refers to something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism. Pro-market, pro-welfare (to a limited degree), somewhat focused on individual freedoms, etc. It’s a wide-ranging term and can cover anything from as far right as America’s gov’t to as far left as something like Sweden’s.
Here it means “Someone who is loyal to the status quo”
That sounds like the definition of “conservative”
So the exact opposite of “loyal to the status quo”?
As far as I can tell, it seems to be a catch all for “people I don’t like”. There’s no real meaning and often times the same commentor describes conflicting idealogies as liberal.
I think there is 2+1 different uses on American forums:
In the 18th century (maybe until Marx?), most people who were economically liberal, were also socially liberal, it was a general movement for more freedom everywhere at the same time.
But now both notions are spread differently along the political spectrum. You have far left who is socially liberal but against free market, you have traditional right who are socially conservative but pro free market, populist right who are social conservative and mildly against free market because they just bundle the most demagogic subject together as a Frankenstein program to get votes, and you have social democrats who defend free market with social progressiveness to compensate for the negative side effects.