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Like surely you must have acquired a clue by now.
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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That's liberal. Far left liberal in fact.
Liberals would be against "government interventionism" such as getting rid of large corporations or taxing to then spend that money on public transportion.
Modern liberalism is not at all aligned with the Left on the Economic space, only on the non-Economic, personal freedoms, one.
Granted, big picture thinking would eventually end up concluding that differentiated treatment depending on wealth together with wealth inequality in overall reduces individual freedom (a few are freer to do what they want but the many are less free) which would end up aligning at least some liberals with leftwing thinking, but sadly that's not what liberalism is nowadays.
Sorry I'm from Canada and we have an actual political system still and not a charade. Trust me everywhere outside of the U.S liberal still means progressive. Your 'liberal' centrism is unique. We call that conservative.
I'm in Europe and I'm making my comment mainly based on my experience with the British Liberals (both the overt ones - the Liberal Party - and the less overt ones - New Labour) as I lived in Britain for over a decade and was even involved in politics there.
Next to the traditional Left in most of Europe, Liberalism isn't at all Left: it's just Neoliberalism with an Pro-Equality But Not The Economic Kind coat of paint to make it seem left of center.
You do get elements of liberalism within leftwing parties in Europe, but they're not liberal in the full sense, probably because of the contradiction I pointed out in my first post (that on the economic side, complete freedom for money results in quality of life going down for most people, which goes directly against the leftwing principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number").
It's not by chance that Liberals constantly talk about what's good for businesses or for the Economy in absolute terms (if it's good for those, then it's overall good) whilst not everything that's "good for businesses or the Economy" is actually good for people: businesses and the Economy are at most a means to an end for democratic lefties (in that they can make life better for most people and must be regulated to stop them from doing the opposite), not an end in itself.
Just because a party calls themselves that and then does some shit, doesn't change the definition of a word
If the definition of the word was that clear we would both know and agree on exactly were "liberalism" starts and were it ends, and wouldn't be having this discussion, plus you wouldn't have made the distinction in your previous post between the meaning of liberal in the US and "everywhere outside the US".
In the absence of such perfect and worldwide agreed definition for "liberalism", the best we can use is real-world examples of those who proclaim themselves as "liberals" (and in the case of New Labour, it's not even in the party name) to show the common understanding of the word in various countries and the ones I listed on my last post are my real world examples which directly contradict your statement that "everywhere outside the US liberal still means progressive".
My notion of "liberalism" is one anchored on my experience of living and voting in 4 different countries of Europe so while I can't prove to you that "that's what's understood as liberalism all over the World" (and, frankly, I doubt it is), it certainly provides a Western and Southern Europe-centric first person observation of what is said to be "liberalism" over here, a reasonably large area of the world which most definitelly counts as "outside the US".
The definition of the word liberal in the dictionary is being open to new ideas and beliefs.
Well, that's definitelly not how the politicians that claim to be liberals in the various countries I lived in practice it.
Dishonest politicians. Who knew.
Is it? I like some links to back up either position.
What are you expecting to have them send you? A link to a paper proving that having empathy for fellow humans means you are not conservative?
Bro. Just like, think about it.
OPs talking points align nearly perfectly with normal progressive talking points.
Increase high density housing.
Increase public transport.
Public safety net (housing for the homeless).
Redistribution of wealth.
What it likely boils down to are the two conservative talking points they have left, guns and reproductive rights.
If OP truly feels that abortion is murder and believes in his heart that he has the right to dictate his own personal beliefs on others, and / or has fallen for the lie that the left is going to take their guns away (they won't), they will vote Republican despite everything else pointing to the logical choice being a progressive Democrat.
Edit:
I feel I need to mention that just because I (a man) personally cannot imagine a scenario in which I would need to get an abortion (because I lack ovaries), and my current life situation is such that I don't forsee my partner requiring one, I still will vote to protect women's right to bodily autonomy. I strongly believe that I have no right to even participate in the discussion. My opinion is literally worthless, and I don't have to live with the consequences of my vote.
That being said, I take the position of provide access to abortion but also provide services to women to try and decrease the need for abortion. I also am in favor of providing free healthcare to pregnant women and children of families in need of it, and I believe childcare should be subsidized.
It's funny because technically abortion shouldn't even be a right vs left issue (has nothing to do with economic policy). It's just like that in the U.S because of the ridiculousness of their binary political system.
Both "sides" are so incredibly close in Economic terms that all that's left for them to differentiate themselves is the Moral plan, hence you end up with ridiculous shit like criminalizing abortion or the whole trans rights fight.
It's all cover to how both "sides" don't really care about managing the country for the good of the many: they're two cheeks of the same arse hence when it comes to overall quality of life you get the same shit.
Ah yes, the same shit. That's why Republican-majority states are roughly the same as Democrat majorities on education, social services, household income, life expectancy, infant mortality... oh they aren't? Yes because "both sides" enlightened centrism is a bullshit position.
Only somebody ignorant of the political culture outside the US would call the middle-point between Democrats and Republicans "centrism".
By global standards, that shit would be "Full-on Right", specifically on Economics were it's Hard Neoliberalism (privatise everything including natural monopolies and refrain from regulating anything, to the point that, to pick quite a poignant example, the way in which the US regulates the safety of new chemicals for environments with direct human exposure - such as home use - is "allow by default until proven dangerous", which is the exact opposite of what's done in Europe were that stuff has to be proven safe first and only after that it's allowed).
Just because your further to the Right party could be best described as "Ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious, full-on racist, ultra-neoliberal, complete total nutcase Far-Right" doesn't mean that the party not quite as much to the Right is left-of-center, especial on economic (and hence, quality of life) matters.
The number of elected Democrats that are left-of-center can probably be counted using the fingers of a hand.
Centrism is a relative position, and the topic is United States politics.
In which case you made a quite the ill-informed assumption in your previous post in thinking that my criticism came from having a political position that was between those parties - a place were I even explicitly had said there was a lot less room than some seem to think there is - rather than one which is to the left of both were there is way more political room for people to be in, at least if one's political vision isn't limited by the very peculiar political blinkers pushed in the American political and media culture to make people think that what you have in the US is the full scope of politics.
That American Centrism you accused me of being part of is much more to the right than almost anything but the Far Right in Europe were even mainstream Right parties are generally to the left of the US Democracts.
also, we should take gun rights back from them. their lord and savior Ronald Reagan was the one who introduced gun control when the black panthers started open carrying.
Republicans are the party of gun control.
When they give you a shocked look, remind them of Reagan.
Should seriously compromise their base.
And their current deity Trump enacted actual gun restrictions too, while the literal devil worshipper Obama did not enact any.
“Take the guns, worry about due process later” - Trump
to be abundantly clear, i'm probably more of a radical socialist than most of y'all, and that post was mostly made in jest but also i wish we'd see some sensible people reclaim the term "conservative" for opinions that are actually conservative and not just hateful.
used to be that conservatives wanted to actually conserve stuff, like nature and the welfare of their society.
I don't think conservative has ever meant the environment. It's about conserving the status quo. At this point the party should be renamed to regressives.
OK that probably explains it. Thanks. I couldn't work out how OP was claiming to be conservative.
I'm not sure how to explain that social security and public housing and public transport and corporate regulation are socialist policies lol. I knew this even before high school. Not decrying you because I agree with everything guy above you said, but you guys are certainly hanging with the wrong crowd.
Why does OP claim to be a proud conservative when listing only socialist policies?
Because brain-rot conservative media told him being on the left was bad
lmfao it's a joke.
Quoth Ash Sarkar: I'm literally a communist you idiot.
Why do you think you're being attacked? Getting used to it huh? Also did you forget to switch accounts?
almost like i'm actually a socialist :O
They are not. They are common sense policies supported, at least on paper, by both left and right in most parts of the world. The first modern welfare state was created by Otto von Bismarck, not exactly a socialist.
Also, socialism in the traditional sense implies some form of public ownership at least of key industries and large companies, which would render corporate regulation a moot point.
He did that with the explicit goal of undermining his socialist opponents (so people wouildn't have a reason to support them)
In regards to your second point, lol no. That would be communism. I'm glad that you think left wing policies are common sense though? Most of us heavily agree which is why seeing the proliferation of conservatism is disheartening.
I know, which is why I said 'at least ln paper'. But a welfare state improves the productivity of workers and soldiers, and Prussia (and Bismarck in particular) did enact many other reforms with this objective.
I understand communism to be worker control of (all) the means of production. Socialism is of course much more broad, but in general it would involve public / state ownership of at least key industries and any companies that are 'too big to fail'.
Bruh. That statement by Marx is an ideal, a metaphor for revolution. No country's populace has ever controlled the means of production. In fact if you want to take that literally, capitalist societies have for more control over industry than socialist ones do. Modern communism is generally seen as where the government controls the distribution of property. In this sense not even Russia is communist anymore.
And I wouldn't conflate them because most socialists would be pretty offended to be identified as communist. The average socialist likes Denmark and Sweden. Not Cuba or something.
Yes to both. Countries calling themselves communist aspire to communism. Not even they claim to be fully communist; if I remember correctly, they call it 'actually existing socialism', which acknowledges that most industry is controlled by the state, rather than workers. They say they will return control to the workers once the conditions are ripe, but so far this has happened only in a handful of sectors. Very few people willingly give up power.
Communists are a subset of socialists. Technically you might be wrong, because the Chinese communist party probably has more members than all other socialist parties in the world put together, but I get what you are saying.
It isn't? I like some links to back up either position.
We are in the same boat.