Comment on Can someone define "liberal" (in its use as an insult) for me?

naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Sigh, I’ll wade into this river of shit.

Liberalism is broadly understood as neoliberalism, which is an ideological descendant from classical liberalism. This ideology positions itself as being broadly in favour of individual freedom within a rather tight definition of freedom. Namely liberals are concerned with the ability of people to read what they like, own what they like, marry whomever they like and so on provided they do this inside of a system of capitalist free market exchange.

Modern liberalism tends to frown on heavy government intervention in market affairs, which they see as representing the free (and thus good) exchange of goods between individuals. They also tend to be broadly in favour of the militaristic western global hegemony.


Criticism of this attitude comes from 2 places.

  1. too much freedom.

  2. not enough freedom.

(1) is people that want women bound up in the kitchen and walk around with an odd gate that makes you remember Indiana Jones films

(2) are people (I’m in this camp) who see liberalism as a weak ideological position that favours stability over justice and, in so doing, ignores the suffering of billions.

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