Oh delicious irony.
Cite?
I know many slaves were literate while slaves – in fact, most of the Roman elite were educated by Greek slave-tutors.
You realize there are people not only don’t know that, they don’t give a fuck? Scary, you stop and think about it.
Are there? Well, they don’t come 'round here much. This is the fighting-ignorance Board. Granted, sometimes ignorance wins . . .
“A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
– Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
And so is a messageboard, I suppose.
I couldn’t agree more, if by “irony” you mean that your statement is intended to convey the opposite of its literal meaning.
I’d be interested in seeing you try to defend this thesis in a new thread.
I presume you mean “interested” in the “morbid curiosity” sense. Similar to the impulse that makes you sniff a bad carton of milk before throwing it away.
Wow. The OP hijacked her own thread in the thirteenth post.
It means very different things to very different people.
To me, a real liberal is one whose politics are based upon individual liberty.
A true liberal should seek equality and freedom, and promote the opportunity for individuals to live the life they see most fit for themselves, constrained only by a prohibition on doing harm to others.
Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, John James Cowperthwaite, Friedrich Hayek.
Examples of true Conservatives: Thomas Paine, Eugene V. Debs and Woody Guthrie. And I hates Mises to pieces!
No, no, no. “Liberal” != “Libertarian,” not any more. We can only discuss the word meaningfully if we use it in its modern sense.
Discuss away. What does it mean to you? That’s the OP’s question, after all.
The OP doesn’t mention “classical liberalism”.
Correct. It asks four questions:
- What does the word ‘liberal’ really mean (not necessarily in a political context)?
- Who is a real liberal?
- How would you describe a true liberal?
- Who are some historical examples of true liberals?
“Liberal” to me is classically liberal, so I answered accordingly, after allowing that the word is used by varied persons to mean varied things.
Actually, what the OP actually wants to discuss is how can we show that the ludicrous caricature of a liberal espoused by Glenn Beck is the way that we want to use the term liberal.
YMMV
Seems like in Europe, “Neo-liberal” means someone who espouses the austrian school ideology – Hayek, Von Mises, et al – rather the opposite of its common meaning in the US. So in the end, “liberal” means you (the person calling me a liberal) are too intellectually lazy to discuss/debate/argue anything without resorting to pigeon-holing and name-calling.
Perhaps. They don’t seem to be in a hurry to elaborate on their remarks.
Is there an accepted defintion of the caricature of a liberal? I’d say it’s something like:
- Pro-choice
- Pro-same-sex-marriage
- Hold traditional religion and values in contempt
- Socialist, or at least advocates the expansion of the powers of the state
- Pro-drug-legalization
- Treat their beliefs as religious dogma, and do not tolerate dissent
- Soft on crime
- Anti-gun, advocates confiscation
That’s all I can piece together from a few years of irregular Rush Limbaugh listenership, before I abandoned much of the mainstream conservative agenda.
That’s interesting. Why “neo”, I wonder?
I agree on the common American usage.
It means the same thing in the U.S too.
I think Michael Lind nailed that in this article:
See also this thread of mine from 2008, where I discuss that article and discuss what I think is the difference between “liberal” and “progressive.” (My view is a bit different from Lind’s.)
Indeed it does, except that for some reason we don’t use the word much. Despite the fact that it’s a pretty powerful thing here; neoliberalism is now the mainstream position of the Democratic Party leadership and has been at least since Clinton took office. The Democratic Leadership Council is neoliberal.