LogFAQs > #949466485

Nichtcrawler X posted...

Also, does "Liberal" mean something different colloquially than politically?

Yes.

Arguably, there's three different mutually exclusive definitions for the word in the US. Lower-case "liberal" is the overall political philosophy, while capital "Liberal" is used to describe the political ideology that claims to be "liberal" but generally isn't. And then you've got the original definition of "liberal", which is also referred to as "classical liberalism" these days, but which is essentially what is currently known as "libertarianism" (which is itself somewhat different from the ideology of the people who actually call themselves Libertarians).

And that's not getting into things like how the US skews farther right than most of the rest of the world at the moment, so Europe generally thinks the American Left is too far Right anyway, and gets confused whenever Americans talk about it.



shadowsword87 posted...

The idea is that it's for social liberals rather than economic liberals.

Which is why one of the standard descriptions of libertarians is that they're "socially liberal, fiscally conservative".

Which, again, is kind of ironic because that definition is literally what "liberal" originally meant in the first place.



shadowsword87 posted...

Honestly the name's kinda a shitshow, but, it's what it is.

It's why we need to go back to having Whigs and Tories.
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