Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
Ah yes, because John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine were such die hard totalitarians...
Do you think Liberals and Leftists are the same thing?
- Thread starter Nikkolas
- Start date
Ah yes, because John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine were such die hard totalitarians...
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Remember what I said: Marxists stole the label. John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine are Classical Liberals, a.k.a. libertarians. Modern "liberals" are just Marxists.
It is always better to call a spade a spade, I agree; but their dominance of the media and institutions is such that it is entirely probable most people will not understand what you speak of if you use term "liberals" for actual liberals.
Its a US specific terminology problem.
What people in USA call "liberals" often aren't really. They are social liberals at best, and democratic socialists at worst. Its the reason why some people choose to describe themselves as "classical liberals", to distinguish themselves from plain "liberals". Obviously if "liberal" meant the same thing it always did, such a distinction would be completely pointless. And once you look up what kind of views do these mysterious "classical liberals" have, you will notice that its not something that will make you popular in the DNC of 2020, instead its more of a libertarianism lite.
So, once we have that out of they way, we can rephrase this into a much easier question.
Why does the extreme left hate the moderate left?
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
Because the left love their purity spirals and moderate lefties lack faith. Indeed, some of them have the gumption to be not entirely sold on socialism! Blasphemous, I know.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
For the same reason religions generally got along far worse with home-brewn heretics than with completely different religions: heretics are a threat to your own way of thinking, because they are very close to it, yet also different enough to call your opinions into question. Meanwhile a different religion is a different religion; you can always pretend their opinions simply do not matter.
Of course, that is not a hard rule...
Because they have fundamentally different end goals and a bunch of other philosophical differences.
Obama passing ACA was a revolution by American standards because we're an ass backwards nation. But it's not even close to as far as a Leftist would want us to go.
You might as well ask why Fuentes' crew was shouting at Charlie Kirk. Because Kirk wants business to come first and Fuentes' crew wants to shit on LGBT people. Different motivations and end goals, even if they are both on the Right.
mesonoxian
Well-known member
Leftists and liberals are not the same thing. The problem is that the US has had a weird evolution of terms, where the word "liberal" is contrasted to conservative.
When I say "liberal", I am thinking of someone who is basically in the John Locke "individual rights and free markets" school of thought, which covers almost the entire US political spectrum, with the exception of a fringe of the Republicans and a few entrists like the DSA on the left of the Democratic party.
"Leftism" rejects capitalism. It is also anti-hierarchical, to a greater degree even than liberalism. (But they both share opposition aristocracy and clericalism.)
The real old right were in support of the existence of aristocracy and established churches. Since they have largely died of, most political conflict is between leftists and liberals of varying stripes (and these days, mostly between various liberals).
The other end of the spectrum is reactionaries, people who don't just want slow or moderate change in a progressive direction, but actual reversals of progress on things like racial and gender equality. They are mostly dumbasses with bad haircuts.
When I say "liberal", I am thinking of someone who is basically in the John Locke "individual rights and free markets" school of thought, which covers almost the entire US political spectrum, with the exception of a fringe of the Republicans and a few entrists like the DSA on the left of the Democratic party.
"Leftism" rejects capitalism. It is also anti-hierarchical, to a greater degree even than liberalism. (But they both share opposition aristocracy and clericalism.)
The real old right were in support of the existence of aristocracy and established churches. Since they have largely died of, most political conflict is between leftists and liberals of varying stripes (and these days, mostly between various liberals).
The other end of the spectrum is reactionaries, people who don't just want slow or moderate change in a progressive direction, but actual reversals of progress on things like racial and gender equality. They are mostly dumbasses with bad haircuts.
It isn't purity, it is that we aren't actually philosophically very close, and so they are at best allies of convenience against the far right. (Doesn't mean they can't be good friends or family members, just like rightists, but I mean as a collective nothing makes us natural allies.)
Yes.Liberals are Marcuse-style dudes who remember that their attitude win Western Europe and part of USA for them,when leftist are neo-Stalins who forget that dude failed with vast armies of tanks,when they have not even one.