I’ve been reading Omnipresent State and Total War (I’ve put it down for a while) and it looked like in the old days liberals would fight for freedom and for less oppression and smaller government. I think there is something admirable about old liberals. Now liberals are statists who want massive government regulation. What happened might I ask to cause this drift between modern liberals and old liberals?
There was no drift. The same people who believed in liberty, still believe in liberty. The label was stolen.
I think Mises said that J.S. Mill caused it.
In Europe liberalism still means classical liberalism. In USA our name was stolen by socialists.
Liberalism is from “liberty” .As football is from “foot”. It is something wrong with american english.
About the history of the term “liberal” see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_term_“liberal”.
FDR was the one who really pushed the “Democrat” party to mean “big government, welfare programs, state guarantees”; originally, he wanted to run as a Republican (which, they generally supported those kind of things, at that point in time), but he kept failing because nobody liked the idea of higher taxes and such…so, he ran as a Democrat to pick up the “low tax, low regulation, small government” crowd…I presume, with no intention of every making due on those promises.
socialists consider themselves to be for liberty too. for them economic liberty is abolition of private property
Agreed. Most “soft” statists are angry about what they perceive to be great social injustices. Typically they blame the free market and ignore what damage the state does.
We need to keep the anger but change the target…
There was no drift. The same people who believed in liberty, still believe in liberty. The label was stolen.
No. The values of ‘liberty, equality, brotherhood’ were found in English radicalism as far back as the levelers (who many libertarians like to claim as anscestors). These values are, if interpreted consistently along a certain line, lead (more or less) to some kind of communism. Marxism is a hair-brained attempt to realise these values, but it is more consistently ‘libertarian’ - in the sense of ideally minimizing coercion and maximizing personal freedom - than Propertarians.
The welfare liberals and the libertarians are basically the cousin of communism and the like, but not nearly as radicalized and (understandably) recoiling from the actual outcome of communist and radical (IE, French) movements around the world. But welfare liberals have more claim to the ‘liberal’ ideology than ‘american’ libertarians do.
I think that much of the libertarian economic, sociological and historical arguments are more accurate than those supposed by the welfare liberals. But there is no ‘essential’ definition of liberty. And of what use is liberty? Rather power.
vichy are you a libertarian socialist who appeared here copla of months ago?
Nope. I’m not a libertarian or a socialist. I have no political philosophy - I reject the premises.
I admit that I’m generally confused by your propositions but one thing I completely disagree with is “But welfare liberals have more claim to the ‘liberal’ ideology than ‘american’ libertarians do. I think that much of the libertarian economic, sociological and historical arguments are more accurate than those supposed by the welfare liberals.”
I just dont see how can welfare liberals follow the liberal ideology in the original sense more that libertarians.
Unless I completely misunderstood the reason why classic liberalism was born.
Perhaps you have - the abolition of status is logically entailed by liberal (that is, egalitarian moralism); but the equalization of positive material freedom and individual well-being is also naturally entailed - or, at least, isn’t obviously contradictory. Libertarians are not really classical liberals, though they are ‘stuck in the 1880s’ forever.
I think that the liberal/libertarian/radical paradigm is nonsensical and doomed altogether. And where libertarianism retains it, it fails, because its opponents have at least as much and probably more a claim to the name than they do.
So according to you classical liberalism sought the abolition of status to replace it with imposition of a status forced by the state?
I dont believe that at all.
I respectfully disagree.
Libertarians are the true liberals in the classical sense, even european social-democrats admit so and I would also say that socialists are stuck in 1850s forever.
Nonsense
William Jennings Bryan, although he was at first controversial and more orthodox Democrats nominated an opposition candidate in 1896 (‘Gold Democrats’).
Populists → Progressives → FDR Liberal Democrat.
i think that the socialists essentially eclipsed the liberals as the 19th century progressed. eventually they called themselved liberals. according to rothbard, the socialists are the confused, middle of the road, liberals.
Socialists have always been around.
but the question is why the soft socialists want to call themselves liberals. marx and the ilk purposely distanced themselves from the “borgoise freedoms” of locke.
Well, modern liberals (American sense) are partly an outgrowth of classical liberalism. According to Spencer they were a new kind of…conservative! Haha. Of course, Spencer is 100% correct.
http://www.constitution.org/hs/manvssta.htm
[1] THE NEW TORYISM
Most of those who now pass as Liberals, are Tories of a new type. This is a paradox which I propose to justify. That I may justify it, I must first point out what the two political parties originally were; and I must then ask the reader to bear with me while I remind him of facts he is familiar with, that I may impress on him the intrinsic natures of Toryism and Liberalism properly so called.
…
Liberty can be ‘liberty from’ or ‘liberty to’, and ‘liberty to’ necessarily includes the ability (power) to engage in something. The classical liberals themselves, and later liberals, saw various kinds of state assistance as expanding this positive liberty. Whether or not they were right, there is no clear dichotemy between classical liberals and welfare liberals. And, as I said before, egalitarian, republican and liberal elements all existed in the radical, socialist and liberal movements. Communism is - radical liberalism.
Libertarians, so-called, are Propertarians. They reflect one mutant strain of liberalism.
Who are, according to you, the classical liberals ?
Classical liberalism was built around rights to life liberty and property - if anything is mutant it’s the modern liberals.