Americans sure love making everything miserably fucking stupid for their own convenience and ignorance.
No, liberals are not leftist ANYWHERE outside the US. And we don’t want that. That’s because that doesn’t make any fucking sense.
Comment on Anon judges Karl
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 1 week agoYes, historically that is the case. Semantics drift over time, though. Even though both liberals and conservatives are classical liberals, only one actually still uses the liberal label. When you don’t acknowledge semantic drift, you alienate others because they can’t follow what you’re saying. If you want to destroy capitalism, you need to make the circle of people bigger, not shoulder people out before they begin.
Phrased another way, you want to move the Overton window leftwards, not contribute to it shrinking to the right.
ddplf@szmer.info 1 week ago
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 week ago
No one except a few communists calls extreme rightwing chuds “liberal” anywhere outside of the US, either.
ddplf@szmer.info 1 week ago
Who’s calling them that? No, that would be libertarians.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 week ago
Behold: mander.xyz/comment/27919524
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yes, and as I already said elsewhere, speak to be understood. In the US, I have to account for semantic drift. You don’t, which is great, but 4chan is an American institution.
So, when the comment we’re all replying under drew the comparison between liberal and 4chan, the underlying context was that this was from an American perspective. So I talked about that, instead of talking about all possible contexts. Isn’t language neat?
Yes, Americans are ignorant, but it’s because of our incredibly loud propaganda. I would ask for kindness, but I’m certainly not gonna force it. I get being frustrated by the American-centric-ness that we all sort of drag around with us. I try to be humble, but it’s really hard to know the shit you don’t know, ya know?
frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
It really depends on how you define things; a black and white definition doesn’t account for scenarios where one could logically be both leftist and liberal. So it’s not exactly nonsense.
ddplf@szmer.info 1 week ago
Okay then, surprise me, what beliefs would a man posses that would lead him to calling himself a liberal leftist?
frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
The terms are not mutually exclusive, you can want more things to be publicly owned or operated but still want some forms of private ownership such as in the case of owning a home.
Do I think corporations should own the land for corporate enterprises or even for apartment buildings? Fuck no, that should be public since the land owners are incompetent and will try to generate a profit on things like hospitals, low income housing, or forcing out all of the good restaurants in the community.
Individual ownership for private use I don’t see a problem with though, such as home ownership, at least for one house. Although I see that as an incentive that should be there to encourage and reward work. Transportation could be mostly solved by a better public transit system that was connected.
Medical care, insurance, social security, childcare expenses, and many more could be covered by taxes, at least taxes on corporations. Yet alone having something like a Universal Basic Income to cover people’s daily expenses. There could be better union protections and such but I feel that’s branching the conversation off a bit much.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 week ago
Nah. We don’t need to surrender the overton window to liberals and let them dictate that the alternative to capitalism is capitalism, except the workers get more crumbs and minorities get conditional protections. Moving the Overton window left of the current rightwing framing requires people to realize how rightwing the current framing is.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yes… by teaching people. Meaning you need to reach them. If the way you talk is a barrier to being understood, you’re going to reach way less people, my man.
I’m gonna quote scripture, not cause I’m Christian or anything (catholic apostate atheist), but because my sister fell into a Christian cult so this is an example that quickly comes to mind (her “church” had a real goofy interpretation of this that a lot of new American Christian Cults regularly have). 1 Corinthians 14:3-8, where Paul tells the Corinthians, who were holding mass at the time in Hebrew, that they need to speak to be understood. If they hold mass speaking a language that no one outside their church understands, they only lift themselves up. But if they speak to be understood, then they can lift up everyone.
Sorry to say, while using liberal in the way you do is definitely a nice shorthand to be able to identify people who are safe for you to express your views with, it also alienates those who don’t know what the historical term means. Speak Latin, dammit (that was how the catholic church misinterpreted Paul’s teaching in this letter. And the new Christians use it to promote speaking tongues. Aren’t religions great? /s)
frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I’d also chime in that definition change and can mean very different things in different places. It’s a bit silly how frequently I see other left leaning people, purely online, demonize anyone using liberal as a label.
To me it comes off as a bit manufactured, it’s far too abundant on spaces like Reddit and certain Lemmy instances, yet near complete absent from offline discourse.