Comment on What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA?
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They don’t use the word “liberal” to define whatever American liberals are supposed to be (not too xenophobic imperialists?), they don’t use the word at all tbh. Idk if it’s an Anglo thing or a particularly American one, though.
frisbird@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
It’s because the default, globally, is now liberal. Liberalism was the movement away from monarchism. Conservatism was the movement to preserve monarchism in the face of liberalism. American liberals are liberal. American conservatives are also liberal. The alternatives are monarchist/conservative (generally only exist in countries with royalty still), communist/socialist, and anarchist (which has both right and left flavors, and even liberal flavors)
yakko@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Bold of you to assert that the American right isn’t effectively a monarchist movement. Trump and his hangers-on have been stridently in favour of a presidency that is king in everything but name, and they have shown an abiding disdain for democracy since at least the Reagan era - though those dots connect backwards as far as you please.
frisbird@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
They don’t believe in hereditary monarchy, they don’t believe that private property should be abolished and that the crown should dole out land based on politics. They’re liberals who want a strong executive that can champion the private property foundations of liberalism against the democratic foundations of liberalism. Remember, liberalism didn’t start because people wanted the common peasants to control the county, it started because the merchants wanted their ill gotten wealth from their rapacious adventures to translate into political power and the crown was not willing to allow lowly merchants to usurp multiple generations of aristocratic family ties.
Musk is a liberal, not because he loves democracy but because he justifies his actions on the basis of free speech, freedom to profit, private property claims, free movement of capital, and the rights the employer. None of these things are compatible with monarchy.
Yes, there is actually a monarchist movement in the USA still, but it is very very small and very fringe and they hold that position in a way that seeks to take the current owning class, turn them into a formal aristocracy, and eliminate not merely democracy but also the liberal foundations of capitalism. It’s anachronistic and impossible, but there are some who think that way
Most conservatives just want to go back to the liberalism of our forefathers that genocides and enslaved millions, when the poor and the women and the brown couldn’t vote because they weren’t considered fully human, and where conquest was a valid legal foundation for a state.
AfterNova@lemmy.world [bot] 21 hours ago
Musk funded a illiberal president that uses the power of the government to terrorize people with draconian anti-immigration policies and pushes highly destructive import tariffs. How much does Musk receive every year from goverment subsidies and government contracts?
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Thanks for the explanation!