Poll: When you use the unqualified terms “liberal” in a political conversation, what do you usually mean?
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Replying to @vgr
I deliberately stopped using it in any political context a few years ago when it became clear that the definition of the word had become a moving target that would always be relocated to "whatever the most expedient sneer I need right now is"
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Replying to @danlistensto @vgr
replacement vocab: socially liberal = pluralistic economically liberal = market economics liberal democracy = popular sovereignty, or just democracy (no adjective) liberal (describing a political party) = center-left, centrist, social democrat, etc.
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Replying to @danlistensto @vgr
I've never, ever heard a social democrat party called liberal before, except when it's a foaming-at-the-mouth slur from someone who literally can't tell a Marxist from a Nazi. (I usually find it means centrist (i.e. neoliberal) when people are self-describing.)
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Replying to @Triquetrea @vgr
keep in mind I live in USistan and our Overton window is comically rightward shifted so a center-right social democrat party (a la Merkel in Germany) would code as a center-left "liberal" party here
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Replying to @danlistensto @vgr
Not sure hyphenating "center" to "left" or "right" adds any meaningful granularity, but yes, I was criticizing that about the US a minute ago. Yeah, it's crazy. And doesn't reflect actual political opinion in the US even a little bit.
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Replying to @Triquetrea @vgr
oh it really does in context of US politics. non-center left has no political offices but increasing cultural influence and is really actually trending towards Maoism at the moment. non-center right has some representation in the Republican party but is a minority.
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used to be that all politics was mostly centrist but that has changed very rapidly in the last 10 years.
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