What does it mean to be "liberal"

[fuelair]

Having read a number of your previous post/arguments

Wacky? Which positions named are not those of US pc'libs?

Uh, your original quote just said liberals - not pc'libs. Don't change the definition in mid stream!! I do not know of anyone calling themselves pc'liberals so I will assume those attributes in your original quote you are actually assigning to them rather than to regular (not pc'libs) liberals and you are using the attributes to define the class. If incorrect, I am sure you will inform us. Thanks for caring!!!

 

[Meadmaker]

US liberals: for;

SSM, "alternate lifestyles", abortion-on-demand, higher taxes, affirmative action, blame-society-first, appeasement as foreign policy, snail-darters etal, increasing gov't regulations-everywhere on everyone (except themselves), etcetc,

against;

personal responsibility for one's actions.

Any questions?

Here's my extremely simplified take on Hammy's list:

Position , True Liberal , US "Liberal"
SSM , yes , yes
"alternate lifestyles" , mostly , mostly
abortion , I think so , yes
higher taxes , no (but must pay the bills) , yes, on the other guy
affirmative action , no , yes
blame society first, rarely , sometimes
appeasement , no , sometimes
snail darters , yes , yes
regulations , rarely , frequently
responsibiltiy, yes , not often enough

 

[Tony]

You forget that hammegk gets to define which True Scotsmen are pc'libs.

Not only that, political correctness (ie, pro-status-quo, pro-establishment) is fundamentally antithetical to liberalism. I wonder how people who confuse the two manage to survive while living with a perpetual brain fart.

 

[FreeChile]

A conservative would prefer to preserve FEMA and possibly alter FEMA in a moderate way (that would be a moderate conservative). A liberal would want FEMA dismantled and perhaps a new organization put in its place. That is using the literal definition of the word according to Webster, a liberal is not bound by tradition so he is free to change them, a conservative preserves the status quo.

liberal according to Webster's

5 : BROAD-MINDED; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms

conservative according to Webster's

3 a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : TRADITIONAL

 

[hammegk]

Tony beat me to it.

True. But two people sticking their fingers in their ears shouting 'nah nah I can't hear you' are no more meaningful than one.

Pick any of the positions I named and explain why it is not the "liberal" position on that issue.

For those who think pc'lib means anything other than standard issue US liberal, I disagree.

And why Meadmaker proposes

Position , True Liberal
"alternate lifestyles" , mostly .... it isn't conservatives who back them.

For the following, his "True Liberal positions" are US Conservative and have nothing to do with US Liberal philosophy:

Position , True Liberal
"alternate lifestyles" , mostly ... Er, 110% is mostly?
abortion , I think so ... Also 110%
higher taxes , no (but must pay the bills) ... no liberal I know of ...
affirmative action , no .... What?
blame society first, rarely .... Huh? Free Mumia!
appeasement , no .... LOL.
regulations , rarely .... Again.
responsibiltiy, yes

How in Ed's name did you conclude those are "liberal" positions????

 

[Meadmaker]

For the following, his "True Liberal positions" are US Conservative and have nothing to do with US Liberal philosophy:

Position , True Liberal
"alternate lifestyles" , mostly ... Er, 110% is mostly?
abortion , I think so ... Also 110%
higher taxes , no (but must pay the bills) ... no liberal I know of ...
affirmative action , no .... What?
blame society first, rarely .... Huh? Free Mumia!
appeasement , no .... LOL.
regulations , rarely .... Again.
responsibiltiy, yes

How in Ed's name did you conclude those are "liberal" positions????

Read, Hammy. I know my posts are long winded, so I forgive, but I'll summarize: A true liberal is open minded, and values freedom. That doesn't always characterize the democratic party or the American left.

Example: A true liberal would not impose regulations without a compelling reason, but a typical US "liberal" would. A true liberal would oppose most affirmative action, but a typical US "liberal" would use it as a litmus test. A true liberal would hold indiduals accountable for what they do, but a typical US "liberal" fails to do so all too often.

On the other hand, IMHO, a true liberal would put environmental concerns ahead of immediate economic activity, in at least some cases. The US left shares that position. A true liberal would probably, but not necessarily, support abortion and gay marriage. A true liberal would dislike taxes, but would raise them in order to avoid passing the bill to the next generation. (See "taking responsibility for your own actions.)

My point is that the Democratic party isn't truly liberal. In some ways, the Republicans can be more liberal than the democrats.

 

[shecky]

My point is that the Democratic party isn't truly liberal. In some ways, the Republicans can be more liberal than the democrats.

Seems with the growth of government in the last several years, there's no such thing as classical liberals in American politics. If there ever was such a thing in the last 100 years.

If anything, the Republicans have been great at out-Democrat-ing the Democrats. Government has turned out to be the ultimate solution to everything.

 

[thaiboxerken]

In the USA, anyone that doesn't agree with Bush and the Republican party is liberal. In otherwords, liberal is another name for "evil commie socialists" according to the GOP.

 

[Kotatsu]

Position , True Liberal
higher taxes , no (but must pay the bills) ... no liberal I know of ...

http://www.folkpartiet.se/FPTemplates/ListPage____1356.aspx

Above, you will find a link to a political party calling themselves liberal (the full party name is even Folkpartiet Liberalerna). Recall that the part of Meadmaker's post you critizise does not concern the US definition of Liberals, why any objections of that nature are irrelevant. As I am not sure you read Swedish, I shall translate (very freely) the relevant part:

"Folkpartiet vill ha sänkta skatter för att få fram fler jobb för att på så vis gemensamt kunna finansiera samhällets viktigaste uppgifter."

"Folkpartiet (The People's Party) wants to lower taxes to produce more jobs in order to be able to finance the most important responsibilities of the society together."

Thus, there are liberal parties who do not only oppose higher taxes, but who actually wants to lower them. The text block below the "Folkpartiet vill:" line is a more detailed description of which taxes they want to lower and/or abolish, but it is not interesting at the moment.

 

[Meadmaker]

When the government spends, it automatically raises taxes, because all those bills have to be paid. The only question is whose taxes are to be raised. George W. Bush has presided over massive tax increases...on our children.

Are high taxes liberal? When you take tax money from me, I have less freedom than I had before. High taxes are the enemy of freedom. Also, the government programs promote a particular agenda, as opposed to being open to the diversity of thought present among the people. I conclude that high taxes are not liberal, and anyone seeking to follow a liberal philosophy should closely scrutinize any proposed government spending. We know that there will be a loss of freedom associated with the taxes that pay for the spending. Unless there is an increase of freedom as a consequence of the spending, it isn't justified.

 

[davefoc]

thaiboxerken wrote:

In the USA, anyone that doesn't agree with Bush and the Republican party is liberal. In otherwords, liberal is another name for "evil commie socialists" according to the GOP.

I think this might be far enough off topic that probably belongs in a different thread, but I agree with this completely. As something of a moderate I listen to pundits from both sides. Today, it is very common to hear people that hold my views described as leftists by conservative pundits. As a life long Republican voter this is a little strange, but it seems to be part of a conservative Republican strategy to marginalize the secular small government, social liberal wing of the party.

The problem that I see for the Republican party with this strategy is that the big spending, corrupt, social conservative wing won't be able to maintain a majority without its traditional base of fiscal conservatives and I don't think the Republican Party is going to be able to maintain the charade that it gives a crap about us for much longer.

 

[Upchurch]

Another requirement of liberalism is that the tolerance must be pretty pervasive. It's not enough to say, "I don't care what those people do in the privacy of their own homes. When they start doing it in public, it's not right, and there needs to be a law to protect the rest of us from it!" That's not very liberal, because it stigmatizes the group and forces them underground. You don't get to claim liberalism just because you won't search them out and arrest them.

Of course, by "those people", I meant Christians {snip}

Evidence?

From where I am currently sitting, I can see at least one Christian church and I know there is another one just down the street that has its own school. We currently have an openly practicing Christian president and much of the congress are the same. When my wife and I go out to dinner with my in-laws, they prey before we eat.

How exactly are Christians forced underground?

 

[Darat]

For the USAians I would just direct them back to their "founding fathers" (and Thomas Payne), your country was, alongside with it's very close cousin France, part of the greatest liberal experiment ever undertaken.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't think it's off topic. I think the reason they can get away with it is the Democratic Party doesn't really have a political philosophy. It has constituencies that it serves, and has some vague notion of "fairness" or "equality" that it strives for. I think that lack of philosophy allows the GOP to pick and choose the definitions. I think the Democratic Party ought to reclaim the word liberalism and adopt it as a politcal philosophy, but to do that, they would have to abandon some elements.

I want to bring up a topic that was part of what got me thinking, years ago, about liberalism and what it means. That topic is education. I think it's liberal to support education. Despite the massive cost of education, I think an educated society is more likely to be a free society. Also, education creates options, and options equal freedom. So, while we can't have unlimited education spending, I'm for education as a high priority, which means spending a bunch of money on it.

But what sort of education? Consider our public school system. (In the US that is, although I think the descriptions probably fit Europe at least as well or better.) It's monolithic, centrally administered, and gives people zero choices. Unless you are wealthy, or have some wealthy benefactors, it's a safe bet that your kid will go to a public school, where he will be exposed to exactly what the government approves of, and nothing else.

Along came school voucher initiatives. That would give people a choice. Among Democrats, they have pretty much zero support. Why? I don't want to argue that they are good or bad here, but are they liberal, or illiberal? Do they promote more freedom, or less? To me, the choice is obvious. They create more freedom. So why are "liberals" against them?

 

[drkitten]

When the government spends, it automatically raises taxes, because all those bills have to be paid.

Not necessarily, depending upon how strict a definition of "taxes" you have.

For example, the US Post Office is almost entirely self-funded and receives no support from the General Fund. Not is it supported by "taxes," in the legal definition. Instead, it operates on a fee-for-services model, where the cost of a stamp covers the cost of delivering the letter to which it is attached. The USPTO operates on a similar user-fee model.

Similarly, there are some forms of government spending that are literally investments; the economic benefits later will more than offset the spending now (including opportunity cost and interest), so taxes will not need to be raised. A well-documented example of this is early child-care development and education; every dollar spent will produce much more than a dollar savings later in reduced spendings on social programs and criminal proceedings. Similarly, every dollar spent on anti-smoking programs will usually produce more than a dollar savings in public heath care costs.

 

[Meadmaker]

How exactly are Christians forced underground?

I was mostly joking, but I do think it's a little funny when people blow a gasket when someone tries to put a Christmas carol into the "Winter Concert", or that case where the St, Paul Human Rights Director had someone remove the Easter Bunny from a city office.

Among society at large, Christians aren't forced underground, but plenty of JREF folks act persecuted if they have to listen to someone say "Jesus". I think those who act that way ought to lighten up. When someone acts that way, he isn't being liberal.

 

[drkitten]

I want to bring up a topic that was part of what got me thinking, years ago, about liberalism and what it means. That topic is education. I think it's liberal to support education.

Fair enough.

Despite the massive cost of education, I think an educated society is more likely to be a free society. Also, education creates options, and options equal freedom. So, while we can't have unlimited education spending, I'm for education as a high priority, which means spending a bunch of money on it.

I hope you don't mean this as naively as it sounds. Merely "spending a bunch of money on something" does not by any stretch of the imagination either improve it or make it a high priority. As a simple example, we could tear down all the public high schools in the United States and rebuild them, but using marble instead of brick.

But what sort of education? Consider our public school system. (In the US that is, although I think the descriptions probably fit Europe at least as well or better.) It's monolithic, centrally administered, and gives people zero choices.

... and effective.

Unless you are wealthy, or have some wealthy benefactors, it's a safe bet that your kid will go to a public school, where he will be exposed to exactly what the government approves of, and nothing else.

.... which in and of itself is not a bad thing. Especially since one of the things that the government approves of, as you pointed out earlier, is "an educated society is more likely to be a free society. Also, education creates options, and options equal freedom," which is why education is a public good, funded by the government.

Along came school voucher initiatives. That would give people a choice.

Merely giving people "a choice" is not necessarily a good thing.

For example, do you want the people to have "a choice" about whether members of your race can vote or not?

Do you want people to have "a choice" about whether the food they serve to you in a restaurant is safe to eat or not?

Do you want people to have "a choice" about whether or not they can drive drunk?

Choice, per se, is not in and of itself a desirable thing.

I don't want to argue that they are good or bad here, but are they liberal, or illiberal? Do they promote more freedom, or less?

Well, given that you've said that education promotes freedom, to the extent that government policy w.r.t. education is to promote freedom, an educational policy that differs from the government policy also specifically does not promote freedom.

So why are "liberals" against them?

Because they do not promote freedom. They promote the illusion of choice, while restricting freedom.

 

[drkitten]

Among society at large, Christians aren't forced underground,

but plenty of JREF folks act persecuted if they have to listen to someone say "Jesus".

Translation : if I can't force you to do what I want (such as listen to me) you're forcing me underground. Your refusal to obey me is a violation of my rights.

 

[Upchurch]

I was mostly joking, but I do think it's a little funny when people blow a gasket when someone tries to put a Christmas carol into the "Winter Concert", or that case where the St, Paul Human Rights Director had someone remove the Easter Bunny from a city office.

That's because public schools are government institutions and the government isn't allowed to promote one religion over another, generally speaking.

Among society at large, Christians aren't forced underground, but plenty of JREF folks act persecuted if they have to listen to someone say "Jesus".

For example?

I think those who act that way ought to lighten up. When someone acts that way, he isn't being liberal.

Depends on your definition of "liberal"

 

[Meadmaker]

That's because public schools are government institutions and the government isn't allowed to promote one religion over another, generally speaking.

For example?

You provided your own example. If you think there's a legal issue involved in whether or not the Smallville Junior High School Boy's Choir can sing "Silent Night", I'm laughing at you.

Oh no! It's a boy's choir!