What is a liberal?

I think he did but never got a mandate for it. Ross Perot voters were for smaller government, and by the time newt got in it was all about streamlining and welfare reform. They both campaigned for awhile on it though.

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Obamacare will mean a massive tax hike on me and I am middle class. How does that help? I think claiming to be for a subset and doing things that help them are two different things.

 

I thank you for the kind words but I don't think I am necessarily worthy of them. As I said I do have issues with social conservatives but they are limited in scope to things like gay rights, flag burning and a few others that I could probably think of. My issues with the left are far larger simply because the left inserts their beliefs on a wider range of issues and on such a larger scale than the right (exception being stuff like DOMA).

After learning about all the history of authoritarian regimes and how they function the single most common factor is that they come into power promising "fairness" and "equality" and in many cases making lots of pie in the sky promises to the lower classes in order to get their support. 50 million people died under Soviet Communism and Mao's reign under the auspices of representing the lower classes and the "working man and woman". Even in cases where statists believe that they are actually doing something good they end up doing massive amounts of harm. The "Great Leap Forward" led to 25 million deaths in China in only a few short years because of Mao's supposed good intentions. This is reality and good intentions don't mean squat in the real world. Outside of the court system the ONLY thing that matters is results.

This is why I have devoted myself to the Libertarian ie classical liberal philosophy (not to be confused with liberalism as it is considered today). It is the ONLY philosophy that cannot in any way shape or form be manipulated to benefit those in power and be used against the individual either by other individuals or a collective of individuals. By definition once a person or groups of persons infringes on the rights of another individual who themselves are not harming anyone else then they are no longer adhering to that philosophy. We have seen throughout history how statism and people that support government intervention has been constantly manipulated with disasterous results leading to countless millions of deaths that could never be done under a state devoted to the ideals of classical liberalism.

 

A liberal is someone who still believes that going to college means they are smart and important, in of itself. Something like 47% of US high school students went to college last year. These kids need to learn some humility.

 

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You will be saving 47,000 lives a year. Your taxes will go down when the non-insured start insuring themselves. Medical costs will go down when the ERs actually start treating ER patients, which lowers your insurance rates. Don't think ~ corporate taxes, 10% of rich taxes. I don't think you want help.

 

No I won't be. Why would my rates go lower later then now? That isn't what happened in MA when they did this. That is why they and NY had the most expensive insurance in the country. Same pooling rates.

 

A liberal is someone who does not care what other people do as long as its mandatory.

 

Good lord man stock holders don't take anything from workers. Of all the dumb things you've said that one takes the cake. In fact it is more nearly the other way around.

Oh and based on recent events a liberal is some who believes that when ever a person with a D after their names takes an elected position or some other government Job he immediately becomes Omniscient and Omnipresent where as if some one with an R after their name wins or takes a similar position he/she automatically beomes as dumb as a bag of hammers.

 

... and he thinks its the system that holds him back.

 

Too bad none of that is going to actually happen. The same jackasses that run to the emergency room with the sniffles now will still be doing the same ten years from now the only difference is we will be paying more for it. Increasing demand never lowers the price of anything.

 

No you didn't. You said because people mis-apply a term to you then the definition of the term is wrong. That is ridiculous.

 

I think you'll probably get a lot of definitions coming from those who aren't liberals at all, but rather conservatives intent on defining them. It's not really different from what its always been...a challenge to the status quo. Liberalism is an Enlightenment philosophy.To understand the Enlightenment and the
foundations of democracy is to know that doctrinal substance was less important than overall philosophy. It's Thomas Paine as opposed to Edmund Burke who was the leading voice of the Anti-Enlightenment. It wasn’t as much Descartes’ reason as it was Newton’s Laws. Not abstraction and definition, but rather observation and experience. The real power of reason lay not in the possession, but in the pursuit of truth. The ideal for knowledge was a further development of 17th century logic and science with an emphasis on:
•The particular rather than the general;
•Observable facts rather than principles;
•Experience rather than rational speculation.

Liberalism is more easily recognized for what it is not, than for what it is. Conservatism stands for something. It presents a positive methodology and attempts to justify itself through authoritarian means. It also follows that conservatism must always defend its position and its positive methodology as being rational. Liberalism doesn’t actually stand for anything. It operates from a negative methodology and attempts to peel away things that obscure the truth, and since it doesn’t actually stand for something, it has nothing to defend irrationally. American liberalism in Schlesinger’s words, feels that “realism is the source of strength, and that illusion, while productive of momentary enthusiasm, will be in the end a source of catastrophe.”

Emerson said, “the basic difference was between the party of the past and the party of the future, between the party of memory and the party of hope. It is still true that the American liberal believes that society can and should be improved, and that the way to improve it is to apply human intelligence to social and economic problems. The conservative, on the other hand, opposes efforts at purposeful change — especially when they threaten the existing distribution of power and wealth — because he believes that things are about as good as they can be reasonably expected to be, and that any change is more likely than not to be for the worse.”

The Liberal feels that things can always be improved, and that's some times viewed as Liberals looking to create a Utopian society, but that's completely false and totally misunderstood,. since Liberals don't see perfection as ever attainable. However it's in the Preamble of our constitution that "We the People, in order to form a MORE perfect union..." that we strive to perfect (or get closer to that idea) what we've begun by stripping away the obstacles that inhibit the social change necessary to insure that the promise of the Declaration of Independence is met. That All Men are Created Equal, meaning that everyone has a place in the economy and social structure of the country. So, social justice is a very high priority if not priority number 1. Liberals tend to rely on logic and reason, and prefer deductive reasoning to inductive reasoning. With deductive reasoning, when the premises are true, the conclusions are always true. Inductive reasoning leads to generalities but never proves something as true.

The main thing, is that Liberalism isn't an ideology because it never stays in one place long enough to become an ideology. Change is the key, and ideologies don't change. They don't admit new information. Liberals have values, they just understand that you can't demonstrate your values as true, so they are always dismissive of those that appear claim to have a monopoly on "American Values". Values are great to hold and we all have them, I have many values I hold to be true. Fortunately I don’t require demonstration of them. I merely try to put them in an objective form (that is to express them as clearly as possible) so that if someone has criticism or alternatives we can discuss them. I think this is superior to trying to demonstrate the truth of some value once and for all?

No doubt, you'll find conservatives and liberals tend toward defining the other in the most negative of terms. Since your question is "what is a liberal", you're bound to get conservatives weighing in with every negative term such as socialist, statist, communist, authoritarians, but they enjoy defining others. Since they oppose liberalism on ideological grounds, they'll never give an accurate definition since they aren't liberals. They only think they know what liberals are about. I don't define conservatives. I let them define themselves, and then hold their own definition up to the light of criticism. I see no point in defining them. They'd simply deny the characterization. So I use the words of conservatives themselves as they define themselves and examine the logic of their definition. It's surprising to what extent they'll go to justify a belief.

 

That isn't liberalism, that is oppositional defiance disorder.

 

Are you a liberal? No. I didn't think so. But you claim to know what a Liberal is and what their religion is? Even to the point of tenets? There are no tenets. There is no doctrine. There are however Conservative Tenets. Canons of conservatism.

In his lecture on “The Origins of the Modern American Conservative Movement” given to the Heritage Foundation in 2003, Dr. Lee Edwards cited Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind as providing the central idea upon which American conservatism is essentially based, calling it ordered liberty.

Kirk described six basic “canons” or principles of conservatism:
1.A divine intent, as well as personal conscience, rules society;
2.Traditional life is filled with variety and mystery while most radical systems are characterized by a narrowing uniformity;
3.Civilized society requires orders and classes;
4.Property and freedom are inseparably connected;
5.Man must control his will and his appetite, knowing that he is governed more by emotion than by reason; and
6.Society must alter slowly.

So Conservatives actually do have "tenets" that they live by. They are ideological. You make the claim that liberals have "tenets" which you then make up as a list of your own assuming that you know what these tenets ( that don't exist) would be. And all of it designed to justify the shortcomings of conservatism. Among those, are the idea that self-interest is actually a virtue. "Government can cure human suffering by taking from those who have" Better to allow suffering than to take any action that might reduce it. Then there is the false notion that "Equality of outcomes is the goal of economics", which is a talking point that has taken on a life of it's own. Nobody expects equality of outcome, but it's such an easy leap to make for the conservative that they trumpet this nonsense as if it were real. This one; "All cultures, except those deemed unacceptable by various liberal teachings, are equal."...doesn't even make sense, but it amounts to a justification for bigotry and racism. And this; "Diversity is a strength" as if it isn't, bit amounts to another justification for bigotry and racism. This; "Capitalism is tolerated as long as those getting rich also belong to the religion, otherwise it is clearly greedy and evil." is another falsehood. There is no religion. But I think there's something about Bearing False Witness that is mentioned in some religion.
And finally..."Subjective feelings are favored over the empirical and objective, e.g. fairness is a highly valued yet undefined concept". That very statement is subjective. Not objective. And in it you're using what is called psychological projection. You're describing conservatism. The conservative's own subjective attitudes toward religion and beliefs which they insist are objectively true, faith based ideology, and values are as far from the empirical and objective as one can get.

Fairness isn't a hard concept to understand for most people. Only conservatives have problems with it. It has to do with a level playing field. That seems to bother the conservative that wants everything tilted to his benefit.

The only thing here that you can be certain of is that they don't want to be like you.

 

This is pretty much what I was pointing out. I think you'll find conservatives defining liberals on their terms, rather than letting the liberal define himself and then critiquing the definition. That's my approach to the conservatives. I don't define them. What do I know about being a conservative. I only know what Conservatives say about conservatism. Then it's up to me to critique what they are saying, which I'm quite capable of doing. Conservatism is an ideology and all ideologies can be examined for the logic of their argument. That's the only effective way of dealing with it that I'm aware of. What makes the ideology true? The fundamental problem with the conservative that I see is they're missing a vital point about who they are. They're all fallible human beings. That means that they're prone to error like everyone. They seem to believe in the infallibility of the conservative ideology. So the logical question becomes how can an infallible idea come from a fallible source? The biggest difference between the conservative and the liberal is that the conservative knows he's right, and the liberal knows he could be wrong. Which one is closer to the truth?

I can say that liberalism is really all over the map. It's always open to new ideas and is willing to explore them, since they aren't restricted to appeals to tradition. Conservatism is the ideology arising out of a distinct but recurring type of historical situation in which a fundamental challenge is directed at established institutions and in which the supporters of those institutions employ the conservative ideology in their defense. Thus, conservatism is that system of ideas employed to justify any established social order, no matter where or when it exists, against any fundamental challenge to its nature or being, no matter from what quarter. They don't like challenges to existing institutions. It's why conservatives opposed the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights movement was a direct challenge to the existing institutions of the time, and conservatism as an ideology is thus a reaction to a system under challenge, a defense of the status – quo in a period of intense ideological and social conflict.

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And that's a weak response.

 

If you don't know what it means maybe... but what you are describing is not a political philosophy, classical or neo... it is a personality disorder. Defiance for sake of it. Without reason, goals or logical mechanism. I think all you are doing here is fueling my conservative friends already held beliefs, whereas I believe you are not irrational children. I simply disagree with the manifest results of liberal philosophical application.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

Classical liberalism as a political concept was much more in line with the Republican platform, valuing rights of liberty and the exclusive existence of government to protect those rights... placing no governmental value whatsoever in wants or even needs of the people. Neo-liberalism attempts to put government on the offensive to level the playing field sacrificing individual rights for perceived needs of the collective. Conservatives do not need to exist at all for liberalism to exist, and to suggest otherwise REALLY begs the question... how could it possibly succeed? It is the most self-defeating political concept I have ever heard.

 

A Liberal is a person who hasn't been brainwashed by the right wing noise machine.

We don't believe government can make things perfect.
We do believe that government can make things better, and of course, it has, and will continue to do so.

 

Yes... anyone who disagrees with you is brainwashed.

What has government made better through neo-liberalism?

 

My thanks to everyone who responded for those interesting and helpful posts. What I am trying to resolve is a logical and linguistic problem devolving about the term 'liberal'.

If the standard English (non-regional, non-political) definition of the term is to be accepted (and there is no cogent reason why it should not be) - is it not a nonsense to use the term in the pejorative sense? Surely a liberal is someone who holds to liberal values, such as the willinnessg to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own, is open to new ideas, is favourable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms, and favours individual liberty, free trade, and moderate political and social reform? All of which being independent of party political affiliation, and all of which are universally accepted as virtues.

So it could be entirely logical to describe a conservative voter who subscribes to the above values, as a liberal - could it not? Why use the term as a collective pejorative when that is so obviously inaccurate? Why not choose another word?

 

Funny how progressive statist sit there and actively deny what they are really about.

In their minds they try to justify taxation, which is taking from one person and giving it to another person, and they call it fairness. Even thought this action is directly the opposite of the definition of fairness.

They claim to be the party of tolerance, until you disagree with their views then they demonize the people who disagree with their ideology. In their minds there's no simple disagreement, you gotta to be a bigot homophob racism sexist etc etc. I hate getting involved in the left vs right circlejerk, but the saying tha conservatives think liberals are just dumb, and liberals think conservatives are evil, rings of truth. If you don't believe me, just browse thru the numerous threads, you'll see the vile and poison that liberals spew about people who hold different views than they do.

 

The left hijacks the lexicon to fit their agenda. That is why they call themselves "pro choice" when hat the mean is "pro abortion". They don't believe in choice anywhere else. They do it with "progressive" too. That word means change over time, but none will ever allow their failed programs of the past to be questioned. Take the war on poverty or social security as an example. Both are clearly flawed. A progressive would realize those flaws and try to fix them. A recalcitrant will ignore the flaws and try to brow beat that "you plan on killing the elderly" and other such hyperbole aimed at silencing opposition. Nothing at all "progressive" about that.

 

A collective pejorative in a political chat room?.....who woulda thunk it?

The truth of the matter is that there is value in using the collective to describe an array of views that mostly associate together, when having a political discussion. Yes it is very possible that your specific views MAY differ slightly along some aspects, but in the vast majority of cases the collective description is overwhelmingly accurate, and if one of your views on the subject being discussed differs from your ideology's dogma, you can very easily correct the record by pointing that out. If I am speaking with someone that is distinctively left on the political spectrum, I can choose to call them leftist, liberal, progressive etc when referring to their political ideology. I see no value whatsoever in going on to parse out the root word meaning of liberal, progressive, conservative etc. What is relevant is the standard modern political stance that accompanies the collective term.

I don't believe you started this thread because you don't truly understand what political stances are Liberal, you merely started this thread so that you could get on your soapbox about the root meaning of the term Liberal.

 

You have completely misunderstood the purpose of my thread. I am trying to establish the validity of the term liberal in the context in which it is customarily used on this and other boards. It is not a matter of 'root meaning' (whatever that means,) it is a matter of what the term means in actuality. The dictionary definition is clear, and not challenged. Therefore, to use the term as some vague collective pejorative is to display ignorance of the language, and no accusations about soapboxes, etc. is about to change that. Don't be so lazy, find another, more accurate, descriptive term, if you don't intend to use 'liberal' as a generally complimentary term.

 

If you want to understand what the term "root meaning" refers to in the context of defining liberal, you need look at the dictionary definition of liberal, which is precisely what you are doing when parsing out the meaning of the term liberal and sticking solely to the dictionary definition. If you want to understand what the term liberal means in actual modern use, you need to understand the positions that accompany the leftist ideology. This isnt really all that difficult. Explaining leftist ideology as liberal or progressive is NOT a display of "ignorance" of the language, and doing so is not lazy in any form or fashion. If anything, it is merely a form of shorthand to describe the collective, which has value.

You could argue that we are not a Democracy because we are a democratically elected constitutional republic, and no true Democracy has ever existed on any large scale, and you would be technically correct. However, if someone calls us a Democracy in the context of a broader conversation, we all know what is meant by using the shorthand "democracy", and pointing out the difference is really only being smarmy and doesnt further the conversation one iota. Just because an argument CAN be made, does not mean that is SHOULD be made. Getting bogged down in semantics is rarely a useful endeavor, especially when the meaning is understood by all.

 

They got rid of smallpox.............does that count?

Or are you angry that they took away your right to enjoy viral infections....

And talk about an "individual mandate", they had "virus squads" of public health workers accompanied by club wielding policemen, to restrain restrain and forcibly vaccinate people. Forcibly entering rooming houses at night, and vaccinating anyone without a vaccination scar.