When did "Liberal" become a bad word?

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

marieholmfan wrote: »

Trinity certainly resembles the USSR. A wild expanse of snowy Taiga the solitude broken only by tiny shepherd's huts.



NO SORRY I MEANT NUIM[/QUOTE]

Now. Now. NUIM has changed a lot since the 1990's when I was there.
They now have Lidl there :eek:

It’s actually an Aldi but do go on.

Lux23 wrote: »

At the very least, libertarianism is essentially a school of thought that legitimises behaving disrespectfully towards different groups in society. Freedom of speech so I can refer to gay people as pansies, women as pussy and much, much worse.

What's wrong with that? Why do we need sacred cows or tiers of victimhood?

Harry Palmr wrote: »

The middle ground is being emptied out - the British used to have One Nation Tories now they have the spawn of Thatchers generation - ideological dingbats, the Labour party (which has enjoyed some interesting diversions down the years) is now a cult with no challenge being brooked by Corbyn's Praetorian guard. The Lib-Dems are just too small to make a difference and they blotted their copy books by propping up Cameron anyway.

Grand here though, and the weather is cracking.

Captain Obvious wrote: »

Because people should be allowed go about their daily lives without being subjected to unprovoked abuse or harassment just because of an aspect of themselves they cannot change. Like it or not, rights sometimes compete with each other.

So should people who meet certain victim criteria, have more of a say than those who don't?

The Catholic Church used the same mentality above to get away with some abuse over the years.

The problem is that it's used as an adjective by complete and utter idiots who can't form an argument. Liberal this, liberal that; but no examples of that they mean, when it's been highlighted that their view point is flawed and their ideas are short-sighted and badly planned.

Think about it: if someone were to use the phrase "conservative" something as an insult, you'd wonder what they were talking about.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

The problem is that it's used as an adjective by complete and utter idiots who can't form an argument. Liberal this, liberal that; but no examples of that they mean, when it's been highlighted that their view point is flawed and their ideas are short-sighted and badly planned.

Think about it: if someone were to use the phrase "conservative" something as an insult, you'd wonder what they were talking about.

In Ireland and on these forums they don't use conservative they use alt-right as the label to insult.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

Bit of a slippery slope here. Neoliberal and anarchist are not the same as liberal and fascist and nazi are not the same as conservative.
If the only why you can deal with my argument is by exaggerating it, then you've kind of missed the point.

What's your opinion of "Liberals" who use the fascist and nazi and alt-right and conservative as synonymous? Who shout "no free speech for fascists" at conservatives whose ideas they don't even try to understand'?
Are they "complete and utter idiots who can't form an argument" too?

Ipso wrote: »

It's down to guilt by association. It's an attempt to discredit people to lump them in with the crazies on their side of the spectrum.
When people say someone is right wing, more often than not it's a way of saying Nazi without going full Godwin.

That happens on both sides (although admittedly more to the right, as you highlight) - someone immediately exaggerated liberal to neoliberal at the top of that page.

But we ARE talking about the use of the word "liberal" according to the title; and it does get used as an insult a lot, by people who have no idea what the word actually means and can not give any examples fo what they mean.

Ipso wrote: »

But aren't conservatives agin the government telling people what to do, but many want to tell married people what they should do.
Not having a go at conservatives specifically, but I think labels are thrown around too easily (not meant in a self help type way).
Every topic is now broken down into to different areas; left/right, liberal/conservative.
There is no nuance or grey areas anymore, every single complicated topic can only be approached from one of two ways.

There might be a few exceptions, but I think conservatism is by its nature incompatible with liberalism and libertarianism.

It's puzzling to me that they've managed to become intermingled in the US scene, because if you want to maintain the status quo, you can only really do it through the authoritarian apparatus of the state

The Christian Right in particular, but broadly speaking the Right in general in the US, and also in the UK and Ireland, seek to maintain or introduce prohibitions at governmental level to curb behaviour they see as sinful, or immoral.

Their position generally doesn't concern itself with human rights but, rather, moral absolutism in the pursuit of a virtuous society. There's a certain degree of collectivism in that, with society possessing a sort of pseudo-personhood giving it rights that need to be defended, rather than the liberal position which sees society as an abstract of the individuals within it.

The horshoe theory, of left and right being similar at the extremes, is down to that sense off collectivism, IMO, because they both attempt to impose norms to 'fix' society in general, even at the expense of the individual.

I say I'm puzzled by the conflation of libertarian and conservative, but it's not that big a mystery. There's pseudo-fascist, corporatist elements in the US that espouse the low-regulation, low-tax elements of libertarianism and pay lip-service to the idea of freedom off the back of that, however it's all completely hollow when their position is enabled by a powerful state for their money to influence, and they're perfectly fine with big government when it's facilitating state monopolies or sabotaging the free market in areas such as renewable energy.

Actual libertarians are hitching themselves to this horse but long term, I think they'd be better off sticking with the left and the Democrats, because although they overtly espouse a certain degree of authoritarianism in the pursuit of equality, I think they'd likely create a society with a much healthier and educated population, and a less corrupt political system. I think you can go from that towards libertarianism, but I don't think you can with the sort of neo-feudalism being pursued by the Republicans or Conservatives.

FunLover18 wrote: »

From my experience on social media and the internet in general, 'liberal' is used as a bad word or a jibe by those who bemoan the censorship of free speech and (again from MY OWN EXPERIENCE) many of them, when they say 'free speech' they mean 'free speech without consequence', they are referring to their apparent right to use hateful and discriminatory language without the being called out on it. Not only this but they believe that everyone should have the right to broadcast their opinions to the world and their views should not only be tolerated but go unchallenged. When someone does challenge them, they are the first to cry 'Snowflake' or 'Social justice warrior' (a term which I assume they use ironically).

This is just my experience of course and I should state that I agree both sides of the conservative/liberal divide can be deeply hypocritical and downright nasty. I agree with previous posters that's far too much resorting to name calling and there needs to be nuance in political discourse as well as more discourse.

Yet at the same time from the other side we see exactly the same behavior, except alt-right, Nazi, Facist is seeing as been used.

I think for the most part both are now using labels to discredit the other but its something i see as starting on the left and with the more liberal minded folks to shut others down.

Liberals on the other hand seem to believe in a hierarchy of victimhood (can't remember the official name for it) and depending on where you fall on the hierarchy you have more credibility in what you say.

That is equally as dangerous as someone who feels they can say what they want regardless of who they hurt.

When I think of liberal I think of the Dutch.

The word liberal has been so muddled by the right in America so much that anyone slightly left of Ted Cruz is now labeled liberal. Liberal/socialist/communist I see used hand in hand to describe same thing.

Hillary Clinton, Obama would be considered moderate conservative corporatists in Western Europe.