Why don’t people use the traditional definitions for the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative” as those

Great Debates
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Why don’t people use the traditional definitions for the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative” as those terms are defined in print dictionaries?

The term “Liberal” is defined as someone who is generally in favor of liberty and in favor of tolerance. The term “Conservative” is defined as someone who is generally in favor of maintaining the status quo. It seems to me that we live in a very Liberal society (not perfectly Liberal) and that most people want to generally maintain the status quo, so it seems to me that most people in the United States and many other industrialized democracies are both Liberal and Conservative at the same time.

Tom,

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Definitions change over time.

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RealityChuck, that doesn’t answer my question. If it was the case that the definitions had changed I was asking why they changed. Also there doesn’t seem to be new definitions for Liberal and Conservative. Currently it seems that people use these terms in very vague ways.

Tom,

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Here’s the Wikipedia entries on the term “liberal” and “liberalism”:

and on the term “conservative”:

That’s probably as close as you’re going to get to a history of the use of the terms. Perhaps someone somewhere has written a book on their history. It would take a book to explore all the changes that the terms have gone through over time. I know you don’t like this, but the fact is that using terms in vague ways is pretty common. That’s how language works.

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Since this is largely a political question, let’s move it over to Great Debates.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

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Wendell, there is some vagueness in the use of words, but not so great as to keep the terms from being defined in a printed dictionary. The definitions for Liberal and Conservative that are given in printed dictionaries are as I gave them. When people use the terms Liberal and Conservative in ways that do not fit the definitions in printed dictionaries I am not sure what they mean. For example when a person says the word “red” I have a pretty good idea of what they mean even though I may not know exactly what shade of red they have in mind, but I do know that they do not mean green. The way some people use the terms Liberal and Conservative is as if people all of a sudden they started to use the word red when they really mean green or maybe blue.

Also, I have studied the history of the words Liberal and Conservative from sources that I trust more than Wikipeida. The meanings of those words have stayed pretty constant up until sometime after World War II. Lastly, as in the case of RealityChuck you have not answered my question.

Tom,

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Ok, Colibri

Tom

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I haven’t answered your question because it would take a book to answer it. If the dictionary you’re consulting doesn’t cover the wide variation in the use of the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” then it’s not a good dictionary. It’s not the job of a dictionary to choose a definition and try to enforce it. It’s their job to give the entire range of meanings that the word has. I think you underestimate the amount of variation in the meanings of other words.

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Because we need handy labels for the two main poles in American politics, and “liberal” and “conservative” are well-established for that purpose.

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Wendell, I have consulted different dictionaries, not just one. All of them in essence give the definition that I started this thread with. Second there are variations in the meaning of words as I already stated, but these variations do not include opposites. The definition of Liberal is someone who is in favor of freedom in every print dictionary I have seen. Saying that a Liberal also is a person who is against freedom is not just covering a variation it’s saying that a Liberal is one thing and its opposite. An opposite is not just a variation. Variations do not include opposites.

BrainGlutton, I do not believe that “. . . we need handy labels for the two main poles in American politics . . .” In fact I see doing that is a problem, because it greatly simplifies the vast differences in opinions and beliefs. But, the question still remains as to why the meaning of the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative” were changed so drastically.

To all, what are your definitions of the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative” and what is the source of your definition?

Tom,

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I disagree that the terms mean substantially different things than they used to, if you confine your definition to the social realm. Nearly every socially conservative viewpoint is either meant to preserve a part of the culture as it is now, or bring back a mythical long-lost way of doing things that was supposedly better, or to adhere to thousands-year-old religious texts. This viewpoint is pretty consistent with the broader meaning of “conserative”, namely, a desire to adhere to old standards and not embrace new ones.

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Similarly, “liberal”, in all times and all places seems to have meant removing perceived obstacles to the individual freedom of members of the lower and middle classes. The fact that those perceived obstacles changed from formal aristocrats to corporate interests doesn’t really change the meaning.

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I’m a liberal and I feel that the dictionary definition describes my position well.

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The problem is not just that the terms - well, “liberal” much more than “conservative” - have changed their meaning over time, the problem is that “liberal” in particular has changed much more, and in a different direction, in the United States than in the rest of the English speaking world (and, indeed, in the non-English-speaking countries that have a word based on the same root). Given the degree of U.S. cultural hegemony in the world, the U.S. usage has affected that in other countries too, but this can often cause considerable confusion in those countries, and I do not think the USA now even has a word to mean what “liberal” means elsewhere.

I think the cause of the problem is that, due to the extreme levels of highly sophisticated propaganda that Americans were subjected to during the cold war, “socialist” became a dirty word in America, considered to be virtually synonymous with “communist” (which is not at all the case elsewhere). Thus in the USA the word “liberal” started to be used to fill the semantic gap left by the removal of “socialist” from polite vocabulary. Although the USA’s political center of gravity is well to the right of the rest of the developed world, it is still not so very far to the right that essentially socialist policies, such as welfare for the poor, progressive taxation, and universal single-payer health care provision, are beyond the pale of political consideration, but you can’t call them socialist, which they are, because, to so many Americans (even some who are fairly “liberal”) socialism is TEH EVUL, and the word causes their brains to switch off.

Those US conservatives who accuse Obama of being a socialist are not idiots because what they say is false. They are idiots because they do not know what teh words they are using actually refer to. Obama, and the Democratic party in general, does favor some some policies and embrace some attitudes that are (in a very mild and limited way) socialistic. The idiocy come in because the people who say this sort of thing think “socialist” means evil, and have no idea what it really means (and if they found out, might actually find they quite approved of it).

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Ludovic, you make a very good point and I feel it is part of the reason why people don’t always use the traditional definitions for the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative” as those terms are defined in print dictionaries. Based on the print definition of conservative – “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc. and to resist change” (The Random House College Dictionary) the people who supported slavery prior to the Civil War would be conservatives, however, I believe that many people who currently call themselves conservatives would object to that description and thus the dictionary’s definition.

Leachcim, I feel that your comment also sheds light on why people don’t always use the traditional definitions for the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative” as those terms are defined in print dictionaries. But, based on your implied definition of liberal it would appear that a person could call herself liberal because she supports laws that require restaurants (not all restaurants are owned by corporations) to serve people of all races, while at the same time a person could call herself liberal because she opposes such laws. I feel that liberals of the 19th century would not have thought of using the term “liberal” in regard to any increase in government power, which laws requiring restaurants to serve people of all races would be.

Edna, thank you for your comment.

Nitt, I feel that your comment has also shed light on why people don’t always use the traditional definitions for the terms “Liberal” and “Conservative” as those terms are defined in print dictionaries.

I do want to point out that the definition of “liberal” includes more than my brief summary at the beginning of this tread. “Liberal” also means “favorable to progress or reform as in religious or political affairs” (The Random House College Dictionary).

Here are some quotes regarding conservative, one regarding liberal and one that I like.

“What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?”
Abraham Lincoln,

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain,

“It is well known that the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.”
Hannah Arendt, Twentieth Century Philosopher, she was born in Germany in 1906 and died in 1975 after moving to the United States.

“By definition a liberal is a man who believes in liberty.”
Maurice Cranston, Twentieth Century Philosopher, he was born in 1920.

“I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”
Will Rogers,

Lastly I want to restate something from my first comment to this thread: “It seems to me that we live in a very Liberal society (not perfectly Liberal) and that most people want to generally maintain the status quo, so it seems to me that most people in the United States and many other industrialized democracies are both Liberal and Conservative at the same time.” I feel that many people see Liberal and Conservative as being opposite and therefore a person cannot be liberal and conservative at the same time, however, based on my reading of the definitions of those terms, they are, for the most part, not opposites and so I feel that people who use the terms Liberal and Conservative as opposites are not using the traditional definitions for those terms as they are defined in print dictionaries.

I see conservative positions to be relative to the society, culture and political system, while liberal positions are for the most part not relative to the society, culture and political system.

Tom,

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You’re all republicans - in the sense that none of you is arguing for monarchy. And you’re all democrats too - none of you is arguing for autocracy.

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It’s just a way of reducing everything to a binary state. A person is identified as liberal or conservative, issues are identified as liberal or conservative, but those are just tags to tell them apart. We end up saying Republican or Democratic, red or blue, also. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a distinquishing political principle involved. It’s just part of the ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality.

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Aren’t any of us ochlocrats?

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Well, yes. We have an argument, nay, a snit, between vaguely liberal factions, some of whom hate being called liberals. That said, there is a fair bit of illiberalism in US politics, for all that we are supposedly a liberal democracy. Some people seem to be voting for tradition, including traditional freedoms, over freedom as such.

“Right” and “left” are too rude?

I agree.

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This is sort of like asking why we don’t use the word “gay” like we used to. One can use it that way, but it’ll be awfully confusing because of it’s use over the last several decades. The thing is, though, that using the traditional definitions of liberal and conservative don’t provide the fairly neat dichotomy that we get with the modern usage.

For instance, someone who is a modern day “conservative” will tend to be denotatively conservative when it comes to social policies but denotatively liberal when it comes to economic policy. Whereas a modern day “liberal” will tend to be the opposite. Denotatively speaking, I don’t think either side of the spectrum really has a substantially great claim to the term than the other. And some people will actually try to split themselves between the two “well I’m socially liberal and economically conservative” or the like.

I think it really just comes down to our culture needing labels. We need a label for us and a label for them so we can identify who are our allies and who are our enemies. It helps us feel like we belong to something while dehumanizing and demonizing our opponents.