Liberal... left?

J

Jahakob

First time out of the vault
I watched Fox news (god have mercy on my sould) the other day and there was something about liberals. And they was said to belong... the left wing? That is strange because I always think of liberals as something dark purple or something. Am I wrong or should liberals be thought of as left?
 
The word liberal was made dirty by the conservatives in the USA. Liberal usually refers to someone who wants to save the whales, and is a member of Greenpeace and PETA. It can also be used to describe someone who has left political views, however.

At least, this is what it means in the USA. It has a different meaning outside that country.
 
That depends entirely on your definition of left, and your definition of liberal.

(Conservative) America usually thinks of anything non-conservative as 'liberal', making them automatically the left, since conservatives are seen as the right.
In Europe, however, liberal often means favoring little control over businesses.
So that's one problem.

The other problem is the definition of left and right, is the left the socialist part of the scale, or is it the liberal part? Both have their counterparts, and they partially contradict eachother.
This is easily fixed by adding another scale, where one scale is a scale of economic freedom, and the other of social freedom. See www.politicalcompass.org for an example of this.


Although it's probably best not to let an arbitary scale determine how you judge parties and ideas.
 
Although it's probably best not to let an arbitary scale determine how you judge parties and ideas.
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No you are right... I got X: -9 and Y: -6 ... :P
That places me with Mandela and Dalai lama. :wink:
 
Sander said:
The other problem is the definition of left and right, is the left the socialist part of the scale, or is it the liberal part?
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If you ask a die hard convervative, he'll say socialists and liberals are the same thing.
 
Jahakob said:
No you are right... I got X: -9 and Y: -6 ... :P
That places me with Mandela and Dalai lama. :wink:
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I'm in there too, I got
Economic Left/Right: -2.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.64
so I guess I'm closer to the center than you are.

I think that some institutions like schools and hospitals simply don't work well when privately funded, and should be public. However, I support a mostly market economy.
 
Sander said:
That depends entirely on your definition of left, and your definition of liberal.

(Conservative) America usually thinks of anything non-conservative as 'liberal', making them automatically the left, since conservatives are seen as the right.
In Europe, however, liberal often means favoring little control over businesses.
So that's one problem
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Not exactly.

The split isn't between the US and Europe and it's not that perspective-based:

Mr. Dictionary said:
lib·er·al Audio pronunciation of "liberal" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lbr-l, lbrl)
adj.

1.
1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
3. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
4. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.
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Bold is the definition of the UK, Canada and US, which means liberal = social liberalist, roughly. There are some spectrum-shifts, but meh, let's not go into that

The world-wide definition of liberal proposing reform in a liberal mind-set. Which means that Chinese, Russian and European liberals are right-wing, but not reactionary or conservative right-wing, and equally in a country left-wing could be liberal if they have a liberal mind-set and are proposing reform of the current state of the nation (the Dutch SP, for instance, is a liberal party)

This is why a lot of politicians use the term Neo-liberal to define the right wing instead
 
There is a split between the US and Europe on definitions, that started on diferent theoretical aproaches in academia and went to the media, and finally the US politicians jumped along and over simplified the terms even more. It was helpfull for them, giving that in the bipartisanship system they have it helped to clear on who was a more leftist democrat and who was a more right wing (normally southerner) democrat, and allowed to label leftist press as "liberal", since calling it socialist was regarded too much on the cold war days. It`s a convenience thing, but always puzzle Europeans, that are used to a diferent aproach.

Still the liberal and neo-liberal labels in Europe and other parts of the world also suffer from a simplification problem, as Kharn pointed out.

In Japan everyone but a few socialists are liberal in some form or another since the end of WWII, so getting names for their parties is kind of hard.
 
Fuck you, you aren't that far from me. There is something severely wrong with this test.
 
Ratty said:
-3.25/-3.69
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Heh.

Economic Left/Right: -5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.33

Almost right next to Ghandi, ey

CCR, you should take a look at their international chart, it's interesting.
 
Economic Left/Right: -6.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.33

I have to say that I don't like the way a lot of those questions were phrased, but I guess it's necessary for tests of this kind.
 
Kharn said:
CCR, you should take a look at their international chart, it's interesting.
Click to expand...
And bullshit. Defence of Falklands is not equal to invasion of Ethiopia.

I'm certainly a centrist though.
 
I took the test, but some of these questions are phrased in unfortunate ways. One question pits "humanity" against "corporations" - what if you think corporativism benefits humanity? Another implies that people who "manipulate money" do not "contribute to society" - why do they think stock markets exist in the first place? Because they do not help generate values? Civil liberties/terrorism... um, are we speaking of the severe anti-terrorist laws of Fiji here, or are we all supposed to pretend we're Brits/Americans? They say in the FAQ that it doesn't matter how you interpret the questions - but how could it not matter if people are essentially answering different questions using the same alternatives?

Anyway:

Right: 1.25
Social Libertarian: -4.15

Funny, there isn't any celebrity in my part of the graph. Let's check out the philosophers... hm, Hayek, Friedman, Rand.

The rest of you are all damn commies.
 
I can't believe I took that dumb test again. It must be a yearly thing.

Economic Left/Right: 4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.38

Sounds right, I guess.
 
I saw this test on StupidEvilBastard. That guy is right on the center as I recall.

Economic Left/Right: -3.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.79
Gandhi and Dalai Lama it would seem... Maybe a little Nelson Mandela

And I agree many of the questions were phrased poorly
 
So.....
politicalMAP.jpg


I guess CCR is the most fascist of us all.
 
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