• MNByChoice@midwest.social
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      9 months ago

      I hear this a lot, so I dug a bit. What do others think?

      From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_Kingdom

      …the derogatory connotation is much weaker in the UK than in the US, and social liberals from both the left and right wing continue to use liberal and illiberal to describe themselves and their opponents, respectively.

      Is it possible, that in the rest of the world, many partys call themselves liberal and after ages of conservative governments calling themselves liberal, many people in the UK have not heard “the left” call themselves liberal?

      It may also be far too general of a term to be of value.

      • PatMustard@feddit.uk
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        9 months ago

        It may also be far too general of a term to be of value.

        This is my main complaint. We humans love putting things in little categories and labels, but if you’re using a word that you think means X and everyone else thinks it means Y or Z then suddenly we’re all taking at cross purposes and everyone thinks everyone else is chatting shit.

        • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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          9 months ago

          Liberalism is also pro social freedom. We should specify economically or socially liberal, depending on the political party it may be a different percentage of each.

      • Bondrewd@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I was already contented with the fact that people here were going to circlejerk themselves into this.

        Liberalism is an ideology of freedom. Freedom is a matter of circumstances. Being free to exploit others closes down your world thus it is not to be considered liberal. Neither will you be free if you get a cop on every corner or taking away your possessions in the name of equality.

        You only really gain freedom through following the intuition on what would open up the world the most for the most people.

        For America, the answer is more socialism. But the Democrats and the Republicans are neo-liberals.