our greatest insult is to call someone a liberal
What do you mean by this?
In the US, we use liberal to describe a person who is left of center on the political spectrum, who is not a socialist. And we use conservative or neo-liberal to describe someone right of center.
Is the goal to make fun of people left of center or to make fun of people right of center? I honestly cannot tell from the above conversation. This may simply be regional based confusion on my part.
I can’t claim to be an expert, and this is strictly in a USA context, but I’d explain it this way: “Liberal” is used to insult someone for having and promoting bad, insufficiently leftward political principles, instead of good ones. The good ones depend on what principles the person doing the insulting holds. The right side of the political spectrum also uses Liberal as an insult, so it can be confusing.
Elements of the far left consider Liberals hardly better than (and in practice indistinguishable from) political centrists, conservatives, or fascists, due to the perception that Liberals support policies that won’t disrupt systems that perpetuate injustice, and will carry water for other liberals even when they commit acts they would denounce their political opponents for doing.
The right uses Liberal as a catch-all term for leftists generally (whom they despise), but it has diminished a bit, being supplanted by “woke” “groomers” “antifa” and “BLM.”
Yeah, I’ve started seeing the far left use liberal to describe anyone to the right of them. And weirdly, people on the far left decry wokeness the same way a conservative would. It has been weird. =/
In the US we use liberal to refer to people left of the American center which is already skewed right. Liberals are center right.
I would say that American politicians are skewed to the right, but the American people themselves are not.
Progressive ideas are popular with Americans.
I would use neo-liberal to describe many American politicians, including a majority of Democrats, as they tend to have views right of center. But I would use liberal to describe many of the people voting Democrat as their views reflect positions that are at least center left.
so, liberalism is decidedly right of centre. it requires buying into capitalism, but it’s not as far gone as the GOP. The US dems are left of the GOP, but right on a more absolute political meter.
Bernie is leftist, but Biden & co are properly right of centre. Your Overton window has shifted so far to the right that a leftist politician will have a harder path than a snowball in hell.
I say this as someone that has a neolib prime minister (Trudeau).
Suffice to say, liberals and conservatives have the same goals, liberals just prefer a sustainable labour class.
Based on this, I think this is a regional issue. In the US, liberal means left of center.
Here is an example of regional differences.
I would say Bernie is democratic socialist. I would call myself a social democrat, so slightly to the right of Bernie, but slightly to the left of a liberal. I would also say liberals are to the left of moderates who are to the left of conservatives/neo-liberals who are to the left of fascists.
The US Overton window is way to far to the right though.
That’s fine, just understand that you’re using a US-centric framework that differs from what socialists mean when they say “libs”. From our perspective, if you’re pro-western-capitalism (and thus pro-neoliberalism) you’re a lib. Democrats, Republicans, doesn’t matter.
Liberals can claim the word means whatever they want it to to make themselves feel better, but as long as they are pro-capitalism, liberals today are not on the left, since leftism is anti-capitalist by definition.
And not only are they not on the left, they actively enable and bolster the right:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
https://blacklikemao.medium.com/how-liberalism-helps-fascism-d4dbdcb199d9
