If all 50 states require this you can’t use it as a criticism of liberalism, because we know that not all 50 states are liberal.
Also, regarding your first few examples, not sure why *saving *the lives of other people, especially children who cannot advocate for themselves, is “meddling.” Also, traffic deaths have a social and economic cost beyond the person who got himself killed, so this is not just a matter of rights of individual self-determination.
One rather basic thing that anyone (sane and honest) should recognize rapidly from discussions such as this, is that asking OPPONENTS of something (such as liberalism) what they are about, wont inform you about the SUBJECT you are investigating.
Asking Anti-Liberals, what the trouble with Liberalism or Liberals are, is as useful as asking an Anti-Semite what makes Jews problematic, or asking an Anti-theist what’s wrong with faithful believers.
This conundrum is made even worse for you, because the actual TRUE ideals and beliefs of “liberals” and of “conservatives” have changed dramatically over the years.
On top of that, you have the problem that there really ARE a lot of people who want to USE the Anti-liberals for their own ends. Those people energetically encourage the Anti-liberals, not only to believe all manner of false things about liberalism, but further, to expand on those false beliefs, so that they can be LINKED to things that the manipulators want.
More than anything else these days, the American people are being prompted to oppose or support politicians, not for what those politicians actually intend to do, bit rather for what the manipulators can persuade them to think the politician or their opponents are LINKED TO.
It’s because most people here take the board slogan seriously, and require logic, evidence and effective argument for proof of points. Doesn’t mean it always happens, especially since Trump’s election. There’s been an influx of suddenly emboldened Trumpers since then, whose purpose here seems to be to decrease the signal-to-noise ratio and/or to air their unreasoning hatred of anyone not of their ilk, most especially those evil liberals.
There’s a word I’m not supposed to use here that fairly effectively describes it, so I won’t. But not using it doesn’t change the reality.
The problem with modern liberalism is the same that occurs in every successful institution or movement as it accumulates power and influence. It attracts psychopaths who exploit the movement for personal gain.
This is nothing new, for this ideology or any other.
I know. Which is why I said every successful institution or movement. Once they move from marginal to successful they become an avenue to power that the unscrupulous and immoral will exploit.
And this is one reason why I make a distinction between modern and classical liberalism.
Sure – there are immoral and unscrupulous people among all political ideologies. I don’t see how this is relevant – I don’t think anyone is saying their preferred ideology has no assholes among them.
I don’t follow – are you saying that there is, in fact, a political ideology with no unscrupulous assholes?
No. It’s just interesting to see the difference in caliber of thinking between those who were prominent in the Age of Enlightenment and the modern gender studies professor.
Those prominent ones are prominent for a reason – undoubtedly there were a myriad of silly people back then who, for obvious reasons, did not become prominent. That’s not an indictment of liberalism in any way, since every ideology (at least the ones made up of humans) will have more small thinkers than big thinkers.
Not that I necessarily have any problem with gender studies professors.
It isn’t. Some conservative crazies (not the normal, moderate ones) just need someone to beat up on and blame for whatever they’ve got a burr under their saddle for.