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.
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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.