http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/ … is my go-to long form description of what I mean by liberal. In discussion, I usually call it "classically liberal", because I know the definition in my head no longer maps to the common definition (on either side of the fence).
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Ah yeah
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Things are named by their enemies. “To own the libs” etc
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Never quite understood what that means. Cause an outbreak of apoplectic outrage?
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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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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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I usually use “liberal” in the political sense: the belief that govt power shld be limited & political power dispersed; the rule of law should apply to all, incl. govt officials; courts shld be independent; there shld be a clear boundary between the ruling party & the state; etc.
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This is a substantive definition of political liberalism. It should NOT be confused or conflated with democracy, insofar as the latter is reduced to the use of elections to elect leaders: democracies can certainly be illiberal and non-democracies can nonetheless be quite liberal.
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In activist or radical political milieus "liberal" signifies the opposite of "radical," and is typically taken as synonymous with "reformist" or "bootlicker." Basically it's used to say "naive and confused but would be a fascist if they had a spine" about both Dems and Repubs.
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However it's important to note that both marxists and anarchists believe the other camp are "liberals" and use the term as a slur to describe them, but with different diagnoses of what's wrong with liberalism at core:https://c4ss.org/content/49534
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