12/27/2023 0 Comments Define liberasIn Europe, liberalism is usually understood to be something closer to neoclassical liberalism, or, as it might be known in the U.S., bleeding-heart libertarianism - favoring free-markets, softer borders, global commerce, and a focus on humanitarian concerns. The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) is considered conservative and Liberal Party in Canada is considered center-left, for example. So those to the left of social liberals see them as center-left, centrist, or even on the right, whereas those to their right see them as just being on the left.Ĭomplicating things further is that “liberal” varies around the world. One confusing aspect is rival ideological groups situate liberals in quite different positions on the political spectrum: liberals are seen as center-left or centrist by leftists, but seen as just generally-on-the-left by people on the right. In the U.S., liberals are standardly seen as social liberals rather than as some other form of liberal, such as classical liberals. Some broad binaries that illustrate common differences in ethos between liberals and leftists are reform vs revolution, pragmatism vs idealism, and compromise vs demands. This can seem more representative of their political positioning than their nominal political affiliations. Since people can easily claim to be politically this or that (“I’m a progressive but…” or “Although I’m a conservative, I think…”), many observers find it more illuminating to look at what these discourse participants spend most of their time discussing or defending. We look at things like who their audience is, who they most regularly associate with. Rather, we pay more attention to elements like what a discourse participant tends to regularly emphasize or what they consistently fail to address. This makes sense, since most discussions aren’t over the technical specifications of one policy versus another. But it would seem people focus more on ethos. For example, what “side” or ideological community does an individual critique more? What media do they consume? Which views do they think fall outside the bounds of reasonable debate? What slogans do they use - or, perhaps better, what slogans do they criticize? (“#Resist” and “eat the rich” reliably pick out two different groups.)īoth models - positions and ethos - are important. This model is slightly harder to pin down, but has to do with political behaviors that don’t pick out one policy or another. The second looks at an individual’s ethos. What policies do they support? Do they prefer incrementally reforming our healthcare system or shifting to a single-payer approach? Do they support prison abolitionism? Abolishing the police? Do they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement? Do they generally favor universalistic provisions over means-tested ones? Do they favor policies designed to redress class-based inequities? This model uses policy preferences as an instrument to determine where one falls on the political spectrum. The first looks at an individual’s positions. When determining what makes someone a liberal or leftist there are two key models we can use. Because they continue to be so widely used (and misused), and because they continue to function as the very categories we use to understand people’s political identities and associations, it’s crucial for their meanings to be as widely, uniformly accessible as possible. These terms - and the broader political spectrum they belong to - are contested, seeing as their meaning has varied historically and around the world. This piece aims to clarify a framework that is ubiquitous in online discussion - the definitional disconnect between liberal and leftist. But it’s also true that clearly defining our terms gets us closer to being able to figure out whose arguments are strongest. It’s not the only reason people have terminological disputes - sometimes, as Oliver Traldi puts it, those disputes are forms of gatekeeping. Terminology such as “weaponize,” “virtue signal,” “identity politics,” “moral panic,” “bad faith,” and “cancel culture” gets diffused so widely and unsystematically that it feels impossible to pin down what someone means without a litany of qualifiers and caveats.īut one reason we fight over language is that we are after clarity. New terms will popularize in a subculture then trickle into the zeitgeist until they lose universal meaning if it was ever there to begin with. Nothing fuels online discourse like fights over language.
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