Are Liberal parties traditionally conservative? I am asking based on what I know of the Liberal parties of Australia and Canada who are both the sort of right-wing conservative parties you wouldn’t expect from a “liberal”. So did the word historically mean something else or do both sides call themselves liberal to make themselves sound good?
It may have meant something in the days when conservative parties were more conservative. In the UK the old Liberal party was overtaken by the Labour party which in turn became less left wing and is closer to the conservative party than it used to be. What’s in a name, the policies can change a lot as time goes on but a name sticks.
The Canadian Liberal Party is more opportunistic than right wing, swaying between the left fringes of the Conservative Party and the right Fringes of the New Democrats. No matter how far to the right the party swings its position is still considerably to the left of the American Democrats.
Yeah, from what I know of canadian politics the Liberal party has always been fairly centrist, with a bit of a left lean, as opposed to the far-left-wing NDP and the various right wing parties. (Well, maybe not always… but I imagine they would probably have been even more left wing before the NDP existed.)
Can you give a cite for your characterization of our liberals as ‘right-wing conservative’??
Europe/UK usage of the term liberal is different from the US usage. In Europe/UK, liberal refers to “free trade liberalism,” or the belief that the government should generally stay out of economic matters. Therefore they favor things like low taxes and privatization, which are typically associated with conservatives in the US.
In the US, liberal tends to refer to tolerance of diversity in origins, values and behavior. They are OK with government involvement, and may favor higher taxes to ensure an adequate social safety net.
True, but I thought it had more to do with the money part. Liberals want to spend money(liberally) to help people. Conservatives don’t want to spend money and don’t offer as much help for people.
Paul Martin is no liberal, though he plays one on TV, as the Canada Steamship Lines publicity of a year or so ago makes clear. His moves to avoid Canada’s labour laws and to avoid paying taxes to Canada were made before he handed Canada Steamship Lines over to his sons as a blind trust when he was made prime minister. After creating the blind trust he was hauled over the coals on allegations of conflicts of interest in continuing to make decisions as to how CSL is run.
Here’s a link regarding Martin as a union buster:
Another, this one from a blog:
Here’s a long history, precorporate and power-broking, of the non-right-wing Paul Martin, written in 2003.
The link above includes mention of his longtime mentor Maurice Strong, former president of Power Corporation, (in which there is this delicious understatement):
This is the same Maurice Strong of the UN and oil-for-food imbroglio. And who can forget Magna International’s former CEO, Belinda Stronach, who left her $10-million-a-year job to join the Conservatives, then switched to the Liberals?
Regarding flags of convenience, the Liberals salute anyone’s, whether it’s the Conservatives’, the NDPs’ or Liberia’s. They’re as right-wing or more as any party that acknowledges itself as being so. The difference is in the quantity and manipulation of its smoke and mirrors.
Thomas Jefferson was a Liberal. So was George Washington, Madison, and everyone else who founded the American system of government. It is entirely accurate to say that the US Constitution is a completely Liberal document. Due to that, the US has never had a Conservative government in the way other countries understand Conservative.
Of course, definitions are slippery things. In the 18th Century, Liberal meant ‘Opposing the Divine Right of Kings, and usually favoring a Republican form of government.’ Since nobody worth listening to these days favors the Divine Right of Kings, that definition has fallen by the wayside. Liberal is now commonly used as a near-synonym for Progressive, and in the modern US that usually means ‘Favoring a social policy that gives money directly to the poor, if not advocating an outright redistribution of wealth.’ That is not a Socialist notion per se, but it sits more closely to Socialism than its opposition does.
The old hallmarks of the various Liberal movements in the US (the abolition of slavery, the abolition of Jim Crow laws, the expansion of the franchise to everyone 18 or older, strong unions, a government-funded social welfare system, and a relatively strong set of environmental protections) have all been achieved. Liberals move on to champion new causes as the political horizon expands, which makes the founding ideas of 18th Century Liberalism seem reactionary to the modern generations to take up the banner. Even Conservatives have adopted formerly Liberal notions.
(This answer might not be what you’re looking for, as it is America-centric, but you didn’t explicitly constrain the OP so nyah! ;))
The US usage of liberal does not relate to spending money liberally. (Am I being whooshed? Is that how Fox News is explaining it?)
In both cases liberal refers to the citizens having liberty. In the Europe/UK sense, it is liberty to pursue business interests without government intervention (labor laws, regulations, etc.). In the UK, for example, the Conservative party (which supports liberal **economic ** policies) is opposed by the Labour party.
In the US sense, it is liberty to live a personal life relatively free of government intrusion and restriction. It also includes a certain amount of freedom to (public education, money for college, health care for the poor, etc.) as well as freedom from restriction (civil rights, legal abortion, etc.).
The original sense, which is still the British/European meaning by and large, meant those who favored laissez faire enterprise over a system giving favoritism to the nobility and aristocracy. This was leftist and reform 250-150 years ago. The parties founded on those principles generally referred to themselves as Liberal Democratic or words to that effect.
A concern to provide for social welfare generated the Radical movement, called Progressive in some areas.
Then later in the 19th century there were various flavors of Socialism, deemed extreme far left.
Meanwhile the usage of “liberal=left/conservative=right” continued as social attitudes changed, so that in America today people who would be extreme radicals by 19th century standards are very moderate liberals. Meanwhile Gladstonian liberalism came to be the hallmark of the paleoconservative, who was joined by others with quite different axes to grind to make up the modern conservative movement.
But the historical nomenclature survived in offical party names and such, and in the modes of thinking of Europeans.