Comment on Im not conservative enough to be a liberal
zoloftt@lemmy.world 18 hours agoAmongst many Democratic people the word is generally viewed as positive.
Are all Dems conservative in your view then? Or did you mean something else by this?
The news, co-workers, and people I’ve talked to our and about in the 5 different states I’ve lived out regularly visit use it to mean ANYTHING “left”.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Yes, that is very common usage of the word for ignorant conservatives. I lived for five years on SE rural Idaho and liberal there was an insult.
I grew up in Seattle and there liberal wasn’t an insult because most people knew what it actually means.
So essentially liberal is a bad word for progressives who view them as fake for a number of reasons and conservatives who don’t understand what the word means but dislike it because they were told it was bad word.
Most Democratic people are conservative and would be considered traditionally liberal. The strict definition of liberal is rooted in classical liberalism, emphasizing individual rights, democracy, a secular state, and free-market capitalism with limited government interference.
zoloftt@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Ok, and I’m not talking about whether it’s an insult or not? You are spending a lot of time trying to explain the word to me. I know what it means, I know how it’s used by various groups. I know a lot of Dems are true Liberals or neo-libs.
I’m talking about whether or not people treat it as a synonym for “left” or “progressive”. A lot of the USA does! Not just conservatives. Just normal everyday people who do not live in philosophical circles.
I’ve lived in Cali, New Mexico, various parts of Texas, Colorado and regularly visit Michigan and parts of the East Coast.
Aside from my Progressive friends that are trying to start a commune in Detroit, no one else uses the word “liberal” by definition. The Detroit commune even uses the word “liberal” when they are talking to “normies” because explaining socialism to others is HARD.
Doomsider@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Yes, I get the liberals being “normies” thing as that was common in the Seattle area.
Most people that use the word don’t know what it means. For those who do, it can have very different meanings as well. For a someone who believes in communism/socialism liberals represent death as in liberals have went around killing leftist for decades now.
The reason there is no left in the US because it was snuffed out several times by liberals. McCarthyism is the most common example, but it has been a reoccurring theme in US polticis so much so that the right has perverted the definition of left and liberals to their advantage to paint Democratic people as unamerican.
I would be very careful allowing others to define words for you. You definitely shouldn’t be listening to people who don’t understand what words mean or random strangers on the Internet like me /s