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Germany Looks to Stop the Far Right From Assuming Power
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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It's tough to be critical of "liberalism" when everyone has a different idea of what it means. It might help to specify "economic liberalism".
Along with it's deep flaws, Liberalism is also associated with things like the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, LGBT+ rights, etc. Conservatives also muddy the waters by blaming these things for economic hardship.
Liberalism is also associated with the invention and virtually entire existence of chattel slavery along with the exporting of the criminalization of queer people to cultures that did not feature such things.
Is it though? In the common consciousness? I really don't think it is. Whether or should be is a different discussion, but the bubble in which those concepts are innately connected is pretty small. You can't just say "liberal" today and expect it to be understood in that way.
Yes, it is responsible for those things, like when we say smoking is associated with higher risk of lung cancer.
Moving the goalposts. Good job observing that liberal propaganda takes credit for good things and not for bad things.
Though outside of America, you get a much more accurate view of the term because liberal means "sniveling, centrist, market-fetishist" in most other countries.
I never said it wasn't. It's about language and perception.
Nope. This was my exact goalpost from the beginning.
Not at all. I have no objection to telling people what liberalism is all about. However, the reality is that decades of propaganda from liberals and conservatives has successfully shifted the definition to a point where it's foolish to just drop the word without further explanation.
The qualifier “progressive” is used to describe a liberal who supports progressive social issues.
Supporting gay rights or feminism etc, that’s being a “progressive” (loosely speaking, it can be defined better than that.)
You seem to want to insist all liberals are progressive liberals but they aren’t.
That’s why the qualifiers “classical liberal” or “liberal conservatism” exist.
In some countries the “Liberal” party are the socially conservative faction of society.
You’re wrong to conflate liberalism with progressivism. That’s why they’re different words.
You’re also wrong to imply that progressive stances are “owned” by “liberals”.
You want to say “progressive liberal” is a tautology…. But it isn’t.