For the longest time, “liberal” seemed like it basically just meant “Democrat” the same way “conservative” has/had been used to mean “Republican.” Now, it seems like it means “bad Democrat” and is even worse than being MAGA the way many seem to use it. Where did its use as an insult within the [relative] political left come from, and what does it specifically accuse/identify someone of/as?
Sigh, I’ll wade into this river of shit.
Liberalism is broadly understood as neoliberalism, which is an ideological descendant from classical liberalism. This ideology positions itself as being broadly in favour of individual freedom within a rather tight definition of freedom. Namely liberals are concerned with the ability of people to read what they like, own what they like, marry whomever they like and so on provided they do this inside of a system of capitalist free market exchange.
Modern liberalism tends to frown on heavy government intervention in market affairs, which they see as representing the free (and thus good) exchange of goods between individuals. They also tend to be broadly in favour of the militaristic western global hegemony.
Criticism of this attitude comes from 2 places.
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too much freedom.
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not enough freedom.
(1) is people that want women bound up in the kitchen and walk around with an odd gait that makes you remember Indiana Jones films
(2) are people (I’m in this camp) who see liberalism as a weak ideological position that favours stability over justice and, in so doing, ignores the suffering of billions.
… everyone? hence my use of broadly? It has complete and utter ideological hegemony since like the 70s. If you study economics you study neoliberal economics and they don’t even bother specifying. All major political parties in the anglosphere and most of western Europe follow neoliberal ideology, even the green-left is largely neoliberal. There are basically no classical liberals left.
Hmm, everyone I know, including very left leaning liberals I know who live in Hollywood, use liberal to represent actual liberal ideologies. They use Liberal (notice the capitalization) to represent neo-liberalism.
Edit: verbally they always specify “neo” if talking about neo liberalism.
Doesn’t the problems of the free market also fall in problem 1? The free market has been shown to not actually be self regulating, which is a sign of too much freedom.
freedom means occasionally you have to fight to defend that freedom and what it means to you. the stability of neoliberalism lulls the masses into placidity and complacency
I think it’s tempting to try and be pithy but freedom is complicated. For some people freedom is an absolute, do what you want when you want. For some it is about theoretical possibilities, for example if you ask if people are free to quit there job the answer heavily depends on how someone balances theory vs practice. Others take a practical lens, freedom only counts if it’s plausible to do.
Sometimes freedom is about ideals. you are free to read all the political theory you like, you umm wont because it’s boring but if someone threatened that would you be upset? At other junctures freedom because pragmatic, “what use is freedom to read if I don’t have freedom to eat? I’ll trade one for the other” someone might say.
Some people rate permissions more than restrictions, some the opposite.
I don’t think it’s a concept we can really pin down. Everyone has their own interpretation and it’s not universally values: much as dominant ideologies often insist it is, the rise of fascism should hint that others care much less about it.
