You know what, I’m dropping this. I may have overstated, and I don’t care to go hunting for quotes from extremists.
I still think it’s likely that there are liberals out there who do hold these views, but they are probably few in number, and on the fringes.
Instead of saying “The reality is that, yes, certainly, there are some liberals,” I should have said, “It’s possible that there are a few liberals,” or whatever.
This whole thing is derailing the thread anyway. I’m out.
We can find a few people who believe any monstrous thing.
why would they want it kept low? To a liberal, it’s just another form of birth control. Bill Clinton’s statement that it should be rare is a non-sequitur for a liberal.
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
The perception that most liberals live “alternative lifestyles.” The ones I know live traditional lifestyles, have traditional jobs, practice monogamy, and look like regular ol’ folks.
This is a good one.
I think one reason conservatives believe such things it not only because they love sky-is-falling-straw-man alarmism, but also because liberalism does tend to be an Overton Window that moves, and they imagine it moving to a further finish line than it actually would. For instance, 70 years ago, liberals would have probably said “It’s a misconception that we support same-sex marriage; we don’t.” But then, decades later, they did. So conservatives then think, “Okay, then if liberals deny that they support people marrying their dogs, cats or cousins today, how do we know that won’t change thirty years from now?” It’s the slippery-slope fallacy, but it arises due to them having seen the window shift on some things before.
I didn’t want the lockdown to go on forever, but I would have loved for it to have lasted another quarter-year or half-year.
Liberalism is one of the political terms, like socialism and progressive, that have multiple meanings that vary internationally and change over time.
Giving the rest of my post a U.S. focus:
For a while, the GOP had some success in demonizing the word liberal, so there was a shift to the word progressive. While there are still echoes of that today, I’d say that liberal today implies center-left, while progressive implies being farther left (but probably not hard-left).
Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times is a liberal. He cannot stand Donald Trump. I almost always like his columns. But the one he has out today will (no link because that would be a hijack) infuriate many progressives.
Zohran Mamdani is progressive. Not so much to my taste, but, allowing that in politics there always are exceptions, virtually all strong progressives support him.
No, that is not the issue at all. A few states have put ridiculous limits on it, like 12 weeks, which is counted from the end of the woman’s last period. The liberal position is that it is a personal privacy issue, that the state has no business looking into this information. A woman’s situation may change, such that she wanted this child around week 18 but now a week 22 she does not, because, NYDB.
And of course the right wing harps on “partial birth abortion”, which is exceeding uncommon but when a late-term abortion does happen, it is just about always out of medical necessity, not a woman suddenly choosing to not go through with the birth.
Right wingers so often beat the “FREEDOM!” drum, and then turn around and say, well, except for that.
as a liberal who rejects religion, my view is more that its better to teach an honest history about religion and how they came about. Also its important to discuss the role that converting political leaders, or military conquests, or trade routes play in religion.
You can draw a line from the creation of Yahweh as a metallurgical deity in a polytheistic belief system around 3300 years ago in the levant to most americans who are religious being christian in 2026. Discussing the process is important so people understand the religion of the culture they were born into was formed by forces of politics, economics, military, etc.
An outright ban would be counterproductive. They tried that in the USSR and it didn’t work.
And how many of those have actually stated that they want religion banned, i.e. that no-one should be allowed to practice religion even in private. My reading is that 99% of them want religion out of public, political life. I am quite anti-religion myself, I think that the religious mental framework is responsible for a lot of shit in this world, but I am as equally opposed to anything like banning the private practice of religion.
Congratulations on finding one person who could be described as liberal who seems to want open borders (frankly, I didn’t read your cites, I don’t think one freelance journalist and author rises to the threshold of being representative of what liberals want). I’m sure you could find another one if you tried. My point here was that you said that are some fringe liberals who believe that. My contention is that it is not enough to qualify as “some,” no matter how fringe.
Yeah, that song lyric doesn’t refer to religion being banned, just for it being non-existent, as an ideal. I agree with that ideal, but I don’t want to ban religion.
I have already acknowledged that I likely overstated the case when I said “some,” and that I am not going to keep replying to what has become a distraction in this thread. With all respect (and I truly like you as a poster): please drop it.
Yes, that makes sense, I see that you were rhetorically conceding that there are no absolutes. Which generally is a useful thing to do for the sake of thoroughness, but it reads differently in a thread that’s about misattributed beliefs. I realized this and edited out my last reply, not before you saw and responded to it.
There are people who call themselves liberals and believe all sorts of illiberal crap because they’ve negatively polarized themselves into adopting the “miscellaneous-bin” identity of whatever the right wing hates. I could give you half a dozen examples from my sister, she’s kind of a tragic case of this. I wouldn’t hold her up as representative, though she’s probably more representative than I care to think.
I’ve almost given up on the words “liberal” and “conservative” having any clear, mutually-understood meaning at all.
Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it.
I think part of the problem is that, so far, liberals have allowed conservatives to define the meaning of “liberal.”
Have you ever looked at a right-wing message board? I have, and “liberals” there means “those who want to abolish Christianity in favour of Islam, support Sharia law, change all our little boys/girls into little girls/boys respectively without parents’ permission, taking Americans’ money to pay for health care for those who don’t deserve it, and opening the borders wide, without customs or immigration checks. Liberals want to indoctrinate our children with DEI in schools and universities, thus making white kids feel inferior to black/brown kids. Liberals regard abortion as just another form of birth control. Liberals support socialism, which means that you can’t get ahead as long as the government controls the means of production, which led to the downfall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”
And so on. What liberals need to do in the face of this is to state their case, quietly and clearly; and to rebut every point conservatives make, which should be easy to do. Problem is, that they’re not. Liberals’ factions are fighting against each other, to try to make their view more important than other liberal views, and bog down in squabbling. Meanwhile, conservatives’ views are consistent, and dominating social and mainstream media. And thus, they are defining liberals to average Americans.
The whole “litter box for kids who identify as cats” thing was made up
Brian
For sure, both sides can distort the other, but it’s probably still broadly accepted by nearly everyone that “liberals” are people who are generally going to be pro-choice, environmentalist, favor higher taxes on the rich, push for things like universal healthcare, pro-labor-unions, favor gun control, feminist, push for social justice on race and other things, pro-LGBT, etc. There will be many liberals who will be an exception on more or one of those things, of course, like Fetterman or Manchin, but the broad camp itself is pretty well accepted as a definition by everyone, IMHO.
Also there’s a distinction between now and ultimately.
I don’t think it’s practical, today, for a single country to allow anyone to enter without restrictions.
But I hope one day there’s a world with complete free movement (apart from obvious exceptions like people entering a country to avoid being punished for a crime). I won’t live to see it but I like progress in that direction.