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Will the real liberals please stand up?

Saipanne

Liberalism largely traces it's roots back to the enlightenment, though an argument could be made to trace it back to the ancient Greeks, we usually begin the movement around the eighteenth century for convenience.

This was an era dominated by two forces, the church and the aristocracy. Both used the tools of dogma, coercion and rule of force to impose their rule.

Liberalism was a rejection of these three pillars. It was founded on the basis that one could use reason, logic and science to persuade people of your point of view. It was a rejection of dogmatic approaches and coercive techniques. That is what being a liberal means to me, at least.

In more recent years we have seen the modern liberals movement use more coercive techniques and dogmatic ideology to further their cause, often using their influence to bully people out of their careers or forcing public apologies out of people for the most minor indiscretion. Movements like SJWs/Feminism have become more associated with such behaviour, apparently abandoning the liberal ideals they claim to represent.

So, why have modern liberals moved towards dogma and coercion? Why do modern day liberals act more like the authoritarians that early liberalism rejected? What happened to all the real liberals?

I'm interested in your thoughts. Do you disagree with my definition of liberalism? Do you disagree with my definition of modern liberals?

Fire away

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Brian?

Saipanne wrote: »

Alt liberal. Noun. Meaning modern day groups who identify as liberals but often behave like their authoritarian alt-right adversaries.

This is the definition given. I don't believe the story above meets this definition. The alt right aligns with white supremacists amongst others, hides in the dark corners of the internet blowing various dog whistles and communicates primarily in shouting louder than the opposition.

If liberals behaved like the alt right, they would have bombarded that speaker with racist insults on twitter, not a polite petition to the University.

ancapailldorcha

Permabear wrote: »

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Sadly, this is slowly becoming the norm.

Permabear wrote: »

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You're not the only one looking at recent developments in the US and Europe with trepidation. I'm personally hoping that the anti-establishment wave passes and liberalism, by which I mean classic liberalism undergoes a resurgence. The bastions of classic liberalism, free trade and free movement of people have become very convenient scapegoats. The problem is that lazy mainstream politicians have relied on these for too long instead of implementing creative, beneficial policies which might have bettered the lot of citizens' and now they're feeling the pinch at elections vis-á-vis Trump and Brexit. I hope that those two examples are the beginning and the end but my hopes are not high.

Permabear wrote: »

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I think the appeal of what you call big government liberalism stems from the fact that a lot of people feel hard done by when it comes to elites. Sticking with the US, the government has spent trillions on lavish foreign wars while its' own citizens are denied quality education, housing and healthcare. Both parties are complicit in this and to excuse one is to ignore the problem entirely. I think people are looking towards non-mainstream politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to establish a government which can use legislation to protect them from corporations which have previously engaged the state's assistance to better their lot at the expense of the average citizen.

K-9

Brian? wrote: »

This is the definition given. I don't believe the story above meets this definition. The alt right aligns with white supremacists amongst others, hides in the dark corners of the internet blowing various dog whistles and communicates primarily in shouting louder than the opposition.

If liberals behaved like the alt right, they would have bombarded that speaker with racist insults on twitter, not a polite petition to the University.

The alt right is a kind of catch all term though because it has disparate elements, the white supremacists, MRA types, Tea Party types, basically the disgruntled right.

I don't think an alt liberal term would work as well.

As for Trump and Sanders, they are the mainstream now, same with Brexit. For me it's a reaction to centrist Government of 20 years or so in the US and UK.

Akrasia

Permabear wrote: »

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The 'big government' liberals aren't the problem, it's the corruption and the role of money in politics.

When 'liberals' want big government, they usually want decent pensions, decent education, decent healthcare and, well paying jobs, decent infrastructure and public services. None of these are the things that lead to the negative elements of 'big government'

The problem in the U.S. is that the government is only pretenting to represent the interests of the voters, and instead, it is run almost entirely for the interests of the economic elites and certain favored special interest groups.

America needs the kind of political revolution that Sanders wants to lead, to turn america from a plutocracy into a social democracy, and if this can happen, the lives of the American citizens will improve

Permabear

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FreudianSlippers

Permabear wrote: »

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I would have referred to myself as a libertarian before the tea party and *shudder* Gary Johnson.

The overwhelming uneducated and poor support of "conservatives" would seem to indicate that they have suffered a similar identity loss.

Permabear

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FreudianSlippers

Permabear wrote: »

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I just meant that I think they gave libertarians a bad name - tarred them all with the same brush.

I'm actually more of a classic liberal anyway tbh.

Permabear

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FreudianSlippers

Permabear wrote: »

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I always see the distinction being discussed in terms of theory as being the role, scope and intervention of the State. Libertarians being for a much more limited State than "classic liberals" - but I admit there is very little difference in real life probably.

I think we share broadly the same views on most things, but I would certainly suggest that there would be plenty of evidence to say I support a more interventionist State than you do.

Brian?

Permabear wrote: »

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Given the variance of the libertarian schools of thought I don't think you can equate the 2.

Akrasia

Permabear wrote: »

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There's only one country waging trillion dollar wars right now. Out of the 35 OECD nations, the vast majority of them are democratic peaceful countries who can levy taxes and educate their citizens to the highest standards without feeling the need to invade anyone.

In short, while so-called liberals campaign for higher taxes, saying that the money can be spent on alleviating poverty, the reality is that the same tax dollars can be spent on blowing people up in the Middle East, torturing people in Guantanamo Bay, or carrying out warrantless mass surveillance of innocent citizens. We don't get to tick boxes on our tax returns indicating how we would like our money to be spent.

This is a problem with the U.S.

America is not the ideal democratic structure, nor is it an ideal liberal society.
It is a deeply divided society by race, education, class and income, and there is enormous interference in the political system by the wealthy plutocrats and oligarchs. When this happens in Russia, we don't see this as an example of liberalism gone bad, we identify it as a kleptocracy. In America, it's a plutocracy

In short, when so-called liberals defend big monopolistic government, they may think they're defending people's right to health care, education, and social welfare. But they're also defending military adventurism, drone strikes, torture, mass spying, and the inevitable corruption that ensues when the state becomes the trough at which everyone wants to feed. There's a good case to be made that liberals' blind faith in benevolent government is only leading to ever-greater centralization of resources and power in governments globally -- which, when populist nationalism and religious fundamentalism become the driving forces behind those governments, can quickly lead to nuclear armageddon.

The only way to keep the world safe, in my view, is through smaller government, decentralized power, and open markets. In that kind of a world, people have incentives to trade with one another rather than fight wars. They have incentives to open borders rather than close them. But the trend now is quite the opposite, with politicians from Trump to Sanders promising to rip up trade agreements, put a stop to globalization, and implement greater protectionism. The problem with this, as the 19th century French liberal economist Frederic Bastiat once wrote, is that "when goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."

Small weak states are vulnerable to being bullied by bigger more powerful states. That's why there is the natural inclination to form alliances and band together for trade or military defence. The ideal might be small independent freely trading nations, but the reality much much more complex

Earthhorse

There are no real liberals just like there are no true Scotsman; these are mythical figures made up to scare children at bedtime. Most politicians and people are not ideologues. Of the few of the former that gained power I can think of Hitler and Stalin; not comforting role models.

There's no reason to hold ourselves to some ideal standard but if we're going to why not slice the cake the other way? Where are the real conservatives? They're in the red states taking more money from the federal government than they're giving back; they're in the Reagan administration blowing up the deficit; they're idling as Bush begins building the surveillance state. But they believe in small government!

To believe that recent shocks to western political systems are a reaction to liberalism only requires you getting the gold medal in mental gymnastics. Brexit was ushered in under a conservative government. Indeed it was an election promise by them that brought about the whole thing in the first place. The Democrats are in The White House but haven't held congres or the senate for years.

The truth is conservatives and liberals have both embraced globalism; or rather it has embraced them. Politics drives human progress surely but technology just as much and it is technology that has made travel and trade, to and with, more countries not just sensible but sort of enevitable. Of course trade agreements matter but globalization would have happened with or without them.

As to war, acd correctly points out that this is a bipartisan issue in the States, with Republicans and Democrats alike voting in favour of American interventions, though it was liberals, if I remember correctly, who took to the streets in vast numbers before the Iraq war had even begun in order to protest it. It seems like the rest of the population have caught up with them now.

The problem isn't liberals or conservatives, which are too woefully broad terms to divide us into anyway, but a political establishment that hasn't caught up to where much of its citizenry are while at the same time leading a whole raft of others behind. Until they institute some reforms like perhaps a single transferable vote we won't see the true diversity of the political spectrum represented in the US or Britain anytime soon.

Akrasia

Earthhorse wrote: »

There are no real liberals just like there are no true Scotsman; these are mythical figures made up to scare children at bedtime.

I've told many a scary bedtime story, and have yet to encounter a true scotsman..

My kids are sufficiently scared by the evil wizard who feeds off the tears of cranky children, whisks them off to a cave of unrelenting misery and can only be vanquished by a child's laughter

[Deleted User]

This 'Alt Liberal' that you speak of is what Quilllam's Maajid Nawaz refers to (quite cleverly imo) as the 'Ctrl-Left'.

The left/right economic divide being used to describe a smorgasboard of beliefs and opinions is becoming more redundant and blunt every week. It just isn't really that useful anymore. However it is at least understood ish and in an effort at proposing a' other side of the coin' for the Alt Right seems to capture it well.

I think trying to somehow squeeze 'liberal' into a description of people who extoll the very very opposite of it is quite poor coinage. Unless you're Jamie Redknapp. Literally.

recedite

Deleted User wrote: »

This 'Alt Liberal' that you speak of is what Quilllam's Maajid Nawaz refers to (quite cleverly imo) as the 'Ctrl-Left'.

I like it. It works on different levels.

ancapailldorcha

Deleted User wrote: »

I think trying to somehow squeeze 'liberal' into a description of people who extoll the very very opposite of it is quite poor coinage. Unless you're Jamie Redknapp. Literally.

I don't really follow football. What does this mean?

[Deleted User]

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Deleted User wrote: »

I think trying to somehow squeeze 'liberal' into a description of people who extoll the very very opposite of it is quite poor coinage. Unless you're Jamie Redknapp. Literally.

I don't really follow football. What does this mean?

Redknapp abused the term 'literally' to such an extent that it is now common parlance for literally to mean both literally and exactly not literally.

The word has been abused into nonsense. This 'Alt Liberal' phrase would eventually do same to 'liberal'. I prefer the 'Ctrl-Left' idea as it is their illiberalism that sets them apart imo.

Tony EH

Does that make people in the middle the Windows button?

recedite

Tony EH wrote: »

Does that make people in the middle the Windows button?

That icon is not a window, its a pie; the middle class pie.
You know, the one that the others get slices of.