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A Question to Liberals: What is Liberalism to You?

<alt>doxygen said:
Trix, my political compass results are in my profile (left-libertarian).

The OP asked for liberals. I'm my first response, I indicated that I'm probably not what is sought.

I very much doubt he want's Prager's confirmation bias for righties strawmen.
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Why don't you let Leo speak for himself?
I'm a classical liberal so my opinions whether you like them or not, are not a "righties' strawmen" and therefore, do belong on the thread.
The problem with modern liberals of today is that they are not liberal at all. They are leftists, authoritarian illiberals. Their view only or the highway...Progressives are not liberals either.
 
MrWonka said:
Then I would say you are a liberal when it comes to criminal law you may just disagree with what constitutes a victim. If someone is flying through a residential neighborhood at 100 mph but doesn't physically hurt anybody was anybody a victim? Or does the legitimate fear that is created by knowing someone did that in an area where your children play meet the bar for victimization?


I don't know man, you pretty much just sound like a full-blown liberal. Liberalism agrees with libertarianism when it comes to personal freedom, but shares your beliefs when it comes to economic freedom.

With respect to Guns, liberals are not at all anti-gun they simply recognize there comes a point where a weapon becomes so deadly that it's only realistic purposes is offensive in nature and not defensive. It's simply a question of where do you draw that line? How many people could a weapon be used to murder in a very short period of time before it becomes too dangerous for the average civilian to own it? 5? 10? 50? 100? Furthermore, what is the probability that an individual will use a weapon for offensive purposes? Have we no right to look at a person's criminal history or judge someone's mental health before we give them access to a deadly weapon?
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Good points. I am all for regulation, but the line I hesitate to draw is the one of outright "banning" of an activity. Granted, some things are legitimately too dangerous even for law abiding citizens, like nuclear or biological weapons, but I feel that even liberals (and conservatives too) can go a little too far with banning objects or activities that could simply be carefully regulated. Driving 100 miles an hour in a residential neighborhood is legitimately dangerous to others and should not be legal. Driving 100 miles an hour on a dedicated road out in the desert is dangerous only to those who choose to be there and to engage in that activity. No victims. If I want to own a machine gun, or to drive 100 miles an hour, there should be a legitimate path for me to take in order to get the required licenses and training in order to engage in this activity. To say outright that a properly trained and law abiding citizen with a clean record cannot be trusted with owning a 100 round machine gun is going too far, IMO. By all means: regulate, oversee, and track such a person's use of that dangerous weapon, but don't just institute an across the board ban and make it impossible no matter who you are.

Prostitution is another one: Liberals and conservatives tend to agree that prostitution should be illegal, but the act of prostitution is not, in and of itself, a dangerous activity. Two intelligent, law abiding adults using care and discretion are capable of engaging in prostitution without harming themselves or anyone else. If it is possible to engage in prostitution without creating a victim, then banning is unwarranted. The downsides of prostitution almost exclusively stem from the very fact that it is illegal and therefore unregulated. Regulate and monitor and the downsides tend to disappear. That happened with marijuana in several states. Marijuana dealers went from being potentially dangerous gang or cartel members selling harder drugs to normal people living down the street with no access to harder drugs. The "gateway" effect vanished with legalization and regulation.
 
MrWonka said:
Yes, he is, and so am I. You're the one who doesn't seem to have your ducks in a row. Maybe it's time you tried Wheaties.
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Liberals are tolerant. You are not.
 
MrWonka said:
You didn't offer your opinion. You posted links to a bunch of stupid youtube videos that I don't feel like watching.



Your description of Leftist described approximately zero people that actually exist in the real world. Take your straw man to OZ and get him a brain.
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And I suppose you think you're tolerant of other's views?
Yeah, tell us again how liberal that you are...
 
<alt>doxygen said:
^^^ pretty close to my take, so I may not be the type the OP is looking for.

I totally get the frustration of having people pigeon hole and stereotype you. That's a cop out. It fails more often than not, but it's easy.
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I think one of the primary problems is that labels are never really sufficient to encapsulate anyone's beliefs. Labels like liberal and conservative are constantly evolving, and I've resigned myself to the notion that no label is every going to be perfectly applicable to my beliefs.
 
trixare4kids said:
And I suppose you think you're tolerant of other's views?
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If it's actually just a viewpoint sure. The problem is that so many of the things that people like you try and classify as your humble "opinions" are in reality fallacies. Your so called "views" are in reality just invalid arguments which can be disproven by evidence and or counterexample. You see the Law of Non-Contradiction tells us that when two statements directly contradict each other we know that at least one of them must be false. Since America was founded on the self-evident TRUTH that All Men are Created Equal, we can derive that any "view" which flatly contradicts that notion must be inherently false(at least here in America that is).

This allows us to safely negate racism, xenophobia, and homophobia as valid perspectives one can hold. Furthermore, we have in recent history extended the notion that all men are created equal to ensure that women too deserve equal rights. Therefore misogyny, sexism, and any law which would only be applicable to women would also be invalid.
 
MrWonka said:
If it's actually just a viewpoint sure. The problem is that so many of the things that people like you try and classify as your humble "opinions" are in reality fallacies. Your so called "views" are in reality just invalid arguments which can be disproven by evidence and or counterexample. You see the Law of Non-Contradiction tells us that when two statements directly contradict each other we know that at least one of them must be false. Since America was founded on the self-evident TRUTH that All Men are Created Equal, we can derive that any "view" which flatly contradicts that notion must be inherently false(at least here in America that is).

This allows us to safely negate racism, xenophobia, and homophobia as valid perspectives one can hold. Furthermore, we have in recent history extended the notion that all men are created equal to ensure that women too deserve equal rights. Therefore misogyny, sexism, and any law which would only be applicable to women would also be invalid.
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There was nothing false about me claiming exactly what I see when regarding what you have written on this thread. There is nothing tolerant about your word salad above either.
 
MrWonka said:
That's like saying good guys don't kill people, therefore, Chris Kyle was a bad guy.
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No, that's what you said.
I've been clear on what I say...
 
I chose my "left lean" because it best fit the political compass results after probably 3 times. I was moderate or centrist before that, and changed it I think near the end of Obama's administration.
As to what label I use, that's just a rough indicator, the devil is in the details so I don't pay much attention to it. The compass at least is a composite of answers to more specific questions..not perfect, but better than a generalized label IMO.

It's funny to see conservative long for some older, classical labels...I mean, that's conservatism isn't it? The way it use to be...don't wanna change, the good old days.
Labels changes, parties change, meanings change...literally our language changes.

If Republicans ever clean up their act, I may go back to centrist/moderate. the idea that only one set of arguments is correct, given the scope/breadth of the political arguments we make, seems absurd. There is value in most political positions...even racist ones (whose cons far, far outweigh any pros). Same with quality control or business operations. You don't try to avoid one set of failure modes that happens to annoy you...you try to catalog and avoid ALL OF THEM, often with a nuanced system that tries to find an optimal path, inclusive of all potential error types and solutions.
 
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Felis Leo said:
Thanks for posting, HumblePi. I just finished the test. According to the tests, I am 0% Liberal, and clock in as "Ultraconservative."
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LOL, I don't know if 100% of either is a good thing.
 
Felis Leo said:
These are questions that I have been wanting to posit to members on this forum who are self-described liberals and those who identify with liberalism to one degree or another:

First, how do you define liberalism and what a liberal is?

Second, why do you resonate to liberalism and describe yourself as a liberal?

Now if you are wondering why I (a far-right conservative) am asking, this isn't to start some vituperative flame war or pose any kind of "gotcha." The reason I ask is because there is nothing more frustrating to me when someone presumes to know what I believe in without asking me, poses a strawman of my overarching political philosophy, and then proceeds to attack views that I do not believe in or have never defended.

In the spirit of goodwill, I want to know where we disagree, and where our principles diverge (if they even meet at all). That way in the future, most of us know what we are discussing when I (and hopefully others) discuss or refer to "liberalism" in general.
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Liberals aren't bound by conservative traditions. They're more open to people of different religions, races and sexual orientations. They're also more supportive on the role of women. They're also more averse to wars and interfering with other nations. Economically, they're more supportive of welfare and government efforts to improve the lives of the poor.

I don't identify as a liberal because I'm a religious conservative and economically I'm just pragmatic. I'm religious but I don't believe in imposing my beliefs on others in a democracy the way most conservatives do.
 
Felis Leo said:
Thanks for posting, HumblePi. I just finished the test. According to the tests, I am 0% Liberal, and clock in as "Ultraconservative."
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I ranked 100% liberal. If we meet maybe we'll blow up the universe :)

I think that particular quiz is more like a modern -day "what party are you today". I found the political compass to rate better in terms of certain axis (It was not liberal or not, it was more nuanced), and the question I felt (from what I recall), had better answers.
 
trixare4kids said:
How can you reconcile your "frustration of having people pigeon hole and stereotype you" when you did exactly this to Dave Ruin's group?
Most liberals, progressives would just say, 'to each their own'...

So you think you're tolerant?
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Stereotype? I don't think that word means what you think it means, Trix. You can disagree with my distaste for Dennis Prager's YouTube channel, that's perfectly fine, but I didn't use a stereotype, and nor am I being intolerant. If I were to be mean to you because you like the channel or because you don't subscribe to my worldview, then that would be intolerant. I don't like the channel because I'm familiar with it, have seen videos torn apart point-by-point a milion times, and have come to the conclusion that much of the intent behind many of the channel's videos is to redefine terms and contradict the narrative set by text-books and acadamia.

When we stereotype, we're taking a widely held beleif about a group and assuming that it's either true, or mostly true. If I were to assume that most black people like fried chicken, then that would be a stereotype. If I assumed that most rednecks/poor, working-class, white people were idiots, drove around in trucks, and rocked mullets, then, well, that would be a self-hating stereotype. Criticism or even snarky remarks about a YouTube channel doesn't fit the bill. If I were to make a blanket-statement about all or most conservative/libertarian-right/right-leaning YouTube channels, then that might, assuming that we can apply the term to non-persons . . . unless I was somehow familiar with all or most of countless channels of the type that undoubtedly exist and based my opinion on that--which would mean that I'm spending entirely too much time on YouTube.

If I asserted that Mike tyson likes fried chicken, whether or not it's a stereotype would depend on whether or not I personally knew him and his eating habits, or had actually heard him say as much.

As for tolerance, yes, I do think that I'm tolerant. Generally speaking.

I despise religion, but do not hate Christians or Muslims or think that they are unintelligent simply because I disagree with them on the subject of the validity of faith.

I'm not a fan of the Republican party (not a fan of the Democratic party either, really) despise right-wing rhetoric and find myself at odds with Republicans/conservatives/Libertarian stances on policy, but do not hate people who identify as such, and nor do I assume that all conservatives universally adopt certain stances on certain topics that I won't get into here.

I beleive in applying the 'golden rule' to people who hold views that I find to be down-right grotesque, and feel that the best way to deal with homophobes, KKK members and people who's views I find to actually be quite dangerous is through words, and not fists. I wish I could fully encompass this ideal at all times, but alas, I'm not without a temper.

You can despise PragerU without being intolerant, just as you can despise Secular talk or The Humanist Report without being intolerant. I don't think one could call for the de-platforming of PragerU and consider themselves tolerant, as I have a hard, fixed stance on the subject of freedom-of-speech.

Despite what you might have possibly ran into in terms of anger, hatred, and the willingness to resort to violence, I think you'll fine as you get to know me, that that's not me.
 
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I think to understand terms like “liberal”, you have to look at the history of how they evolved. Here is how I see the terms liberal, conservative, neoliberal, and classical liberal having evolved.

Early on in the industrial revolution, you had liberals. These were pure free-market laissez capitalists. The term conservative was used at the time as well, but this was in reference to the aristocracy- the old, established money. Under the influence of the writings of Adam Smith, the economy of the early industrial revolution was left almost entirely free, laissez faire, with the idea that the “invisible hand” of the market, which Smith had written so eloquently about, was going to work everything out for the best.

As the industrial revolution went on, however, some problems began to arise. One of the big ones was the ever increasing exploitation of child labor. Children as young as 8 would be hired to work up to 80 hours a week, under grueling and dangerous conditions in mines and factory floors, and still were being paid only enough to avoid starvation. There was no liability for the health of these children, and if they lost an arm or a leg or a face from these dangerous working conditions , they could easily just be replaced with another little urchin. The argument was made at the time that if the free market was just given a little more time, this problem would correct itself. It did not. The problem was only getting worse.

The other problem was the ever increasing disparities between wealth and poverty. Believe it or not, the argument that the wealth would eventually trickle down to the workers from the factory owners was made even then. It did not for the most part . Many of these factory owners were making more than the GDP of entire nations, but the workers continue to be paid only enough to survive to come back to work the next day. Karl Marx, on seeing the desperate working situations of these workers in England, had predicted that this would lead to the stabilization and eventually a violent workers revolt. In many European countries especially, as the disparities of wealth continued to increase, Marxist parties began to make dramatic gains in the polls. There was increasingly the threat of violence and political as well as economic instability.

This is where the classical and new liberals began to divergent. The classical liberals felt that nothing should be changed, and the free market should be allowed to continue to go on completely unfettered. The new liberals, on the other hand, began to be very alarmed by the rise of Marxism and instability caused by continued clinging to the old system. They therefore recommended some basic safeguards, laws, and regulations on the free market system. These include a child labor laws, minimum wage laws, workplace safety laws, etc... as these regulations were put in place, the deep dissatisfaction and instability in society began to subside. The extremist and potentially violent Marxist parties began to fade away.

So in this way, the Neo liberals saved capitalism from Marxism. They saved it from itself.

These new liberals are now just called liberals. The old classical liberals Who wanted to continue to conserve the pure free market system are now called conservatives, or classical liberals, or liberterians, for obvious reasons. No one wants to conserve a system of aristocracy these days, so the old conservatives went away.

A little historical perspective sometimes helps.
 
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