So I heard somebody a while back say: “I consider myself to be a Liberal, but I don’t always agree with Liberal views. For example, I’m against gun control.”
It bothers me the way “Liberals” today (or, at least, people calling themselves “Liberals”) misunderstand the semantics of the term “Liberal”. Somehow gun CONTROL is now something LIBERALS believe in. Obviously, this makes no sense. Liberalism is for the preservation of liberties, not the enactment of authoritarian controls.
I’ve also noticed how some of these so-called “Liberals” seem to believe there has been a sort of propaganda campaign to transform the word “Liberal” into a pejorative, and so they feel the need to say something to the effect of “I’m a Liberal and proud of it”, or some such nonsense. The irony is that these people have co-opted the term “Liberal” and while they may claim to be advocating for liberties, they are, in reality, groupthink conformists united mostly by what they are told they should be against, and stand for little else.
I know this is nothing new to anybody on this forum, but sometimes the misuse of these terms (elsewhere) really just bug me.
The term was redefined in the progressive era to mean the opposite. It’s straight-out-of-1984 doublespeak. The term is not supposed to actually change it’s meaning, but to lose it’s meaning. If there is no word to describe that you are for individual freedom, then you can’t make that argument.
All liberals should uphold liberalised (i.e. a lack of) gun laws as well as greater political freedoms in general but progressive taxation and the welfare state are perfectly consistent with the ideology which was born out of the French Revolution and was associated with ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity. Liberalism in the Hayekian sense is one respective strain of the ideology.
That is the first good argument I have heard for the American usage of the term liberal ever. French revolutionary leftists were statists about taxation and the welfarism. As such the Hayekian usage of the term came later and is not “the original one”. But then we would have to change what it says in the dictionary, because liberal no longer means an advocate of individual freedom. You would for example have to admit that the Nazis were liberals. At some point it comes down to what the word means. Authoritarianism isn’t liberal, or you are not referring to the word that is defined in the dictionary. Or succumbing to doublethink. Clearly a state monopoly on guns is not “liberalized”.
Well it is a very large umbrella term. And though I like the word there is a very real direct link between insane American Revolutionaries (Thomas Paine, etc) and the beyond insane French revolutionaries to the socialists, to every modern political institution we have today. Yesterdays Whigs are todays Progressives I’m afraid, that’s just the way the liberal zeitgeist seems flow.
You would for example have to admit that the Nazis were liberals
I just saw this, and no, I wouldn’t say that. Liberalism is about political freedom (though admittedly not individualism) and therefore inconsistent with nazism.
It is true, though. There is a difference between the French Enlightment - a rationalist discours - that gave birth to all different kinds of rationalist (social) philosophies, amongst which a specific kind of liberalism.
The French revolution, on the other hand, was the glorification of democracy, the striving for material equality and interventionism.
Most so called “liberals” (I call them libruls) are only for privileges, not liberties. Liberty is a double speak to fog the masses, like when people talk about heaven and all those wonderful things that awaits us while at the same time making real hell on earth, killing and raping in holy wars.
Generally freedom from a fascistic government. Some liberals may be progressives who advocate a redistributive welfare scheme (and arguably increased government intervention) but they should also, by name of “liberal” advocate greater social freedoms such as equal rights for women, homosexualities and ethnic minorities and also be opposed to restrictions on social freedoms such as restrictions on drugs, guns, etc. They should also advocate reformed justice systems that advocate rehabilitation rather than punishment and also advocate freedom of speech and secular state/politics. That is the general gist of it. So basically they have socially liberal stances (namely liberty, equality and solidarity) but are not necessarily economically liberal; the likes of Hayek and Mises, though were both. They are different from socialists, of course who advocate collectivisation of the means of production/workplace democracy; they generally uphold basic market structures and perhaps even elements of free trade. The UK Lib-Dem party are centre-right in their politics.
Gun control is fascism, income taxation is fascism, welfare is fascism. It’s not a slander, originally the term was positive.
Which is incompatible, if they support fascistic government they are not liberals.
If it’s imposed through the government it’s fascistic even if it’s in the name of tolerance.
If anything it’s more authoritarian to have the government meddle with your rehab and impose it’s morality than to have objective standards for punishing crimes and get over with it. Would you say that more lenient punishment is generally more liberal?
I specifically stated no gun control. With respect you have a rather one sided view of fascism. In fact fascism is supposed to incorporate a corporatist economic order with a position somewhere between laissez-faire capitalism on one hand and bureacratic state socialism on the other. It is in social realms where fascism becomes authoritarian (though to be fair corporatism is fairly authoritarian as well).
You seem to have a one dimensional analysis as a Left = 100% government control and Right = 0% government control (which I can tell you is an incredibly common [and annoying] perception among rightists). There is a massive distinction between being socially liberal and economically liberal.