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Title.

Liberal has different meanings in different countries.

It comes from the word Liberty, which loosely means freedom from oppression. There are many different types of oppression,, so more terms have evolved from it.

Social liberal means freedom to act as you please in society, economic liberal means freedom to spend or earn money without it being taken or used by someone else. Both are vague,, as is the term liberal itself, so it doesn't really have a definite meaning. That's why it's different in different countries.

A Canadian liberal would probably favour small business, a massachusetts liberal would favour taxes to unions, a british liberal favours third way centrist economics, a French liberal favours higher taxes, a German liberal favours lower taxes and a Dutch liberal favours party time. (I joke, they favour nationalism)

Point is, liberal means many things.

Leftists are lunatic terrorists who watch my little pony and celebrate soviet russia.

Originally posted by Blakemore
Liberal has different meanings in different countries.

It comes from the word Liberty, which loosely means freedom from oppression. There are many different types of oppression,, so more terms have evolved from it.

Social liberal means freedom to act as you please in society, economic liberal means freedom to spend or earn money without it being taken or used by someone else. Both are vague,, as is the term liberal itself, so it doesn't really have a definite meaning. That's why it's different in different countries.

A Canadian liberal would probably favour small business, a massachusetts liberal would favour taxes to unions, a british liberal favours third way centrist economics, a French liberal favours higher taxes, a German liberal favours lower taxes and a Dutch liberal favours party time. (I joke, they favour nationalism)

Point is, liberal means many things.



Leftists are lunatic terrorists who watch my little pony and celebrate soviet russia.

Bump.

Leftists stole the meaning of liberal (see von mises book called liberalism) therefore the people who respect liberty became libertarians.

Put another way, there's a straight line of reasoning from John locke all the way through to hoppe.

I sympathize. Liberal should not be synonymous with a lefty

Leftist is mostly used as a shorthand for "person who disagrees with a conservative viewpoint I expressed."

Sometimes it also refers to any Gen Z kid, because many old people hate young people for having different viewpoints.

Liberal varies depending on location.

You know Bernie Sanders?

Look to the left of him. Way left.

Leftism doesn't really exist in the US. The Democrats are "neo-liberal" capitalists, and the Republicans are "neo-conservative" capitalists.

The fringes are all social crap, which while important, has no real effect on the "business" of business as usual.

Occupy Wall Street promised to do that, and where are they now? Funny how the left let that one fade away.

Originally posted by StyleTime
Leftist is mostly used as a shorthand for "person who disagrees with a conservative viewpoint I expressed."

Sometimes it also refers to any Gen Z kid, because many old people hate young people for having different viewpoints.

Liberal varies depending on location.

I use leftist as a term for anyone left of center.

Leftists are like the soviet union from the 50s

Originally posted by Klaw
Title.

That is an incredibly broad topic, that has a lot of overlap and a lot of different definitions.

The left right divide traditionally comes from the assembly during the French Revolution, where the people in favor of the republic and change sat on the left, and the people who wanted to preserve the status quo and the monarchy on the right. That is the traditional progressive/conservative divide. And that's sort of the broad sense in which Democrats are on the left and Republicans on the right in the US, even though in a lot of contemporary politics both are quite right, in their support for corporate capitalism.

Liberalism goes back to people like Adam Smith and John Locke, it is basically the idea that human freedom is important, and that a regulated market can create a lot of value for people. Often liberals are the kind of people that want to save capitalism through some minor welfare programs, people like FDR or JFK. Democrats since the 90s, since Clinton have been something that is called neoliberal, which is a philosophy that holds that privatizing and marketizing everything leads to the best results (this is clearly historically absurd, but it is also very beneficial to the extremely wealthy, so it continues to be a popular philosophy)

Since about the time of Marx, as capitalist republics have become the status quo, the definition of Left has moved towards people who want to change this status quo in favor of more freedom and self determination to the vast majority of people, rather than a relatively small group of elites. That's why it is often said that "Socialism is the real Liberalism", in the sense that Democratization of the workplace would fulfill the philosophical ideals of liberalism.

That's why in a international and political science sense people like Bernie Sanders are on the left, while people like Clinton (both), Obama and Biden are not considered to be on the left (even though they are relatively further left than most Republicans)

John locke said it best. Once you apply money to property, everything collapses