This doesn’t make any sense to me. Does “Liberal” mean something different in America than UK/Europe?
Not “anywhere else”. Europe, specifically. You Europeans are such narcissists. You are not the whole planet.
Liberal in this context is used to refer to the political and economic structure that is liberal democracy; not necessarily the western social definition of liberal.
Conservatives are liberals because they support the status quo that is liberal democracy
edit: this sounded like I was disagreeing with you, but I was just trying to add context so the joke was legible. I completely agree with your comment
OP is addressing both definitions.
“Liberals” (in the American bipartisan usage of the word) in the US think of themselves as the counterpart to “conservatives”, but leftists regard them both as liberals in the classical sense as mentioned.
It’s a cynical jab at the american liberal self-identity, because their self-image is primarily defined by their opposition to conservatives but this is suggesting they are actually the same.
No, but some users on Lemmy, especially hexbear or lemmy_ml, use Liberal as a slur for Capitalist and they go on long rants about how Liberals and Nato are the devil while they touch themselves to the thought of going down on Xi Jinping.
This post is just pro-CCP Propoganda.
“Hey guys, isn’t a little concerning how the vast majority of our politics have been concentrated into a very small segment of the Overton window such that the only real party disparities are an extremely small handful of key issues like abortion and gun rights?”
“Silence, cee cee pee shill!”
Sure dog. Everything is fine. Blame your insecurities on China.
Liberal in America used to refer to the progressive left, which I understand is already different than most other countries who use Liberal to refer to Classical Liberals (which we generally just call conservatives or fiscal conservatives). However, to make things even more confusing, the term now mostly refers to centrists thanks to the, “Third Way,” Democrats. They were basically a mix of more Neo-Liberal fiscal policies with more progressive social policies; Bill Clinton is the textbook example, supporting gun control and early education while gutting welfare and deregulating Wall Street. This kind of Third Way Democrat basically became the standard of the party, which therefore made them standard of American Liberals. People farther left than these Liberals started referring to themselves as progressives or leftists instead.
So, tl:dr; Liberal used to be a progressive, but now mostly means left-leaning centrist.
The only people who think liberal means progressive are 18th century monarchists and liberals
I think it means libertarian, and I’ll go with that assumption until I get corrected.
Perhaps a European ideal of Libertarianism. US liberal politics is a facade of good will to hide the same pro-corporate agenda pushing that the other party does while hiding behind a facade of moral vitriol. US libertarians believe in enforcing one’s own freedoms with force rather than relying on government force to defend your rights. US leftists have no political base in our elections, by design.
