The word 'liberal'

Tim56

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There's a word for that...

Nov 4th 2004

From The Economist print edition

...And we want it back

ALL through this election campaign, George Bush has flung the vilest term of abuse he knows at John Kerry. You name the policy—Mr Kerry's support for punitive taxes and reckless public spending, as Mr Bush put it; his preference for stifling government and overweening bureaucracy; his failure to stand up for, oh, expensive new weapons systems, microscopic embryos and the sanctity of marriage—and the president's verdict in each case was the same. “There's a word for that,” he said, again and again. “It's called liberalism.”

What more need one say? And Mr Kerry was not just any sort of liberal: he had actually been the most liberal member of the Senate. When told this, appalled Republicans jeered more loudly than if Mr Bush had accused his challenger of eating babies. (That man dared to run for president! Did he think he would not be found out?) Understandably, Mr Kerry was sometimes wrong-footed by this egregious defamation. Occasionally, smiling nervously, he said he was not ashamed to be liberal. (Audacious, but perhaps unwise.) At other times he tried to deny it. (You see, he protests too much.) In America, that kind of accusation cannot easily be shrugged off.

“Liberal” is a term of contempt in much of Europe as well—even though, strangely enough, it usually denotes the opposite tendency. Rather than being keen on taxes and public spending, European liberals are often derided (notably in France) for seeking minimal government—in fact, for denying that government has any useful role at all, aside from pruning vital regulation and subverting the norms of decency that impede the poor from being ground down. Thus, in continental Europe, as in the United States, liberalism is also regarded as a perversion, a pathology: there is consistency in that respect, even though the sickness takes such different forms. And again, in its most extreme expression, it tests the boundaries of tolerance. Worse than ordinary liberals are Europe's neoliberals: market-worshipping, nihilistic sociopaths to a man. Many are said to believe that “there is no such thing as society.”

Yet there ought to be a word—not to mention, here and there, a political party—to stand for what liberalism used to mean. The idea, with its roots in English and Scottish political philosophy of the 18th century, speaks up for individual rights and freedoms, and challenges over-mighty government and other forms of power. In that sense, traditional English liberalism favoured small government—but, crucially, it viewed a government's efforts to legislate religion and personal morality as sceptically as it regarded the attempt to regulate trade (the favoured economic intervention of the age). This, in our view, remains a very appealing, as well as internally consistent, kind of scepticism.

Sadly, modern politics has divorced the two strands, with the left emphasising individual rights in social and civil matters but not in economic life, and the right saying the converse. That separation explains how it can be that the same term is now used in different places to say opposite things. What is harder to explain is why “liberal” has become such a term of abuse. When you understand that the tradition it springs from has changed the world so much for the better in the past two and a half centuries, you might have expected all sides to be claiming the label for their own exclusive use.

However, we are certainly not encouraging that. We do not want Republicans and Democrats, socialists and conservatives all demanding to be recognised as liberals (even though they should want to be). That would be too confusing. Better to hand “liberal” back to its original owner. For the use of the right, we therefore recommend the following insults: leftist, statist, collectivist, socialist. For the use of the left: conservative, neoconservative, far-right extremist and apologist for capitalism. That will free “liberal” to be used exclusively from now on in its proper sense, as we shall continue to use it regardless. All we need now is the political party.

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3353324
 

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- PC -

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#2
Tim56 said:
However, we are certainly not encouraging that. We do not want Republicans and Democrats, socialists and conservatives all demanding to be recognised as liberals (even though they should want to be). That would be too confusing. Better to hand “liberal” back to its original owner. For the use of the right, we therefore recommend the following insults: leftist, statist, collectivist, socialist. For the use of the left: conservative, neoconservative, far-right extremist and apologist for capitalism. That will free “liberal” to be used exclusively from now on in its proper sense, as we shall continue to use it regardless. All we need now is the political party.

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3353324
Tim this probably highlights an issue I have been struggling with for a while..Who and what do Liberals and Labour stand for? Has the word lost its meaning? Has the ''Politics of Opposition' transformed both parties into a different species than their parent and grandparent?

In the politics of opposition both parties poll and search for electoral issues which they feel will move the swinging voter to vote for or against them thereby moving away from their core values and principles. It becomes a ''lets stay in POWER'' issue rather than any core belief. Is that good for the nation? Does one become as bad as the other

Politics of Opposition also is where the Oppositionj(doesnt matter which party) automatically opposes anything brought up NOT because they believe it to be a bad policy but because they didnt think of it first. Or it makes populist sense to stand on the side of angels.

Tim what you have highlighted is how fractured the media and the political parties have become , and how everything needs a label. We have small l Liberals and Neo-Liberals and Union Labour and Far Left Labour..No wonder people are confused come election day.

They are labels and words and with PC they will continually change as the boundaries of what they stood for change or someone goes even further left or right
 

Mr Q

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#7
MightyFighting said:
"Liberal" is a left-wing word co-opted by the conservatives in order to give their heartless economic policies a friendly name.
Not quite. The "Liberals" in Australia are economically liberal in that they believe in individual rights in economic issues, however they are definitely not socially liberal. By definition, liberal in politics means: "Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism", which is not something you would associate with the Liberal Party.

The word liberal (not the party) would be a tag better applied in Australian politics to the ALP in the modern era (of the major parties, in reality it would be a tag best applied to the Greens), although in the era in which the Liberal Party came to prominence under that name both sides of politics were fairly socially conservative.

Certainly one thing that is being proven in the US (and to a lesser extent Australia) is that social liberalism is not popular among a mostly conservative electorate, but that the more liberal sections of the electorate are tending to be more radical, pushing some of the more socially centrist voters toward the conservatives on these sort of issue.

To some extent in Australia, the Liberals were elected because at the moment the electorate doesn't really like liberals.
 

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evo

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#12
Well thats the thing thing DaveW.After 50 years of following Keynesian,and other economists of dubious doctrines, the person proposing lassez fare economics is now the radical.

I've never heard of these European neo liberalists reffered to in the The Economist article before.They sound quite good.
 

MightyFighting

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#19
Tim56 said:
Do you know the origins of classical liberalism? They go back much further than 'economic rationalism'.
You'd have to recognise the part played by liberalism in breaking down the social order, opposing the power of the church and the king. That is a left-wing thing. In fact wasn't the original meaning of left-wing anti-monarchist (refuring the monarchists sitting on the right hand side of the french parlement, or something like that)? It wasn't until later that socalism became a political force, and many who were liberals adopted socalist policies (believing these to be an extension of liberalism).

If I can quote from a Wikipedia article:
"These two diverging branches of liberalism are known today as libertarianism and social liberalism, respectively. However, both of them usually claim the name of "liberalism" as their own, and do not recognize the other branch as being liberal at all."
I can't disagree with that.
 

evo

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#23
MightyFighting said:
In other words, "I'm alright, Jack."

au contraire.

from wikepedia

focusing instead on achieving progress and even social justice by more free-market methods, especially an emphasis on economic growth, as measured by changes in real gross domestic product.
 

MightyFighting

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#24
sacre bleu. (seeing as we're into french.)

From Wikipedia:
Neoliberals believe that greater economic and political interdependence will lead to progress and a reduction of international tensions or at least divert states from utilizing military means to resolve conflict. Libertarians reject the neoliberal belief that global governance bodies or state negotiated treaty regimes that bind the individual are desirable.
You like global bodies such as the UN? (Just to clarify, as most right-wingers seem to hate it.)
 

Mr Q

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#25
DaveW said:
So what's the difference between economically liberal and economically conservative?
Ah well, that's the thing isn't it. Liberal is whatever you feel like defining it as. Ultimately at the moment its being defined similarly to "do-gooder", something which should be good, but isn't.

From my understanding, liberal has the same root as liberate, thus in theory a liberal policy would free you from constraint. Thus a unfettered capitalist economy (such as the right wing of politics tends to) would in theory be more liberal - economically - than a more controlled economy.

The problem is that the word has been so mangled by misuse it really depends on where you stand - to be described as Liberal (in political terms) in Australia makes you politically right wing - in the US it would be an epithet thrown at you by the right wing implying a lefty nutbag.
 
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