liberals revolting? what an idea… 
my oh my, the times they are a-changing ^^
or is it the geographical difference that makes us understand ‘liberal’ so differently?
yes, the definitions are different…
a liberal in america is a left wing totalitarian, not liberal (pro freedom) in the traditional or european sense at all…
-Imp
Hum, How do they differ from the European liberals? Just asking for your insights.
Dear aspacia
The way I see it (as a European who converses with a fair few Americans, Canadians, Australians) is that a classic Liberal, a European Liberal (PM William Gladstone* would be a good example) were pro individual freedom, pro laissez-faire politics. Not at all unlike Reagan, who in European political terminology is called a liberal.
In the US a liberal is what would in Europe be called a strong-state socialist, someone who favour large state, big government, large civil service, lots of laws, lots of other regulation, lots of state interference in the lives of the citizens.
But then of course in US parlance ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ never meet, whereas in Europe they actually mean the same thing a lot of the time (as is also the case in Japan and Australia who have liberal conservative (i.e. Reaganite or Thatcherite) parties)…
The present Democrat party in the US is basically Socialist masquerading as liberal, and I think it’s this hypocrisy (claiming that its interference is for your own good and actually enhances your freedom) that makes Imp detest them so much. The Republicans are in many senses worse than the Democrats but they do seem to be less hypocritical about it. You do get what you see with the Republicans, whereas the Democrats are constantly playing some awful spin game.
Imp, I am interested in your opinion. I hope I am being clear here.
siatd summarised my position on the different meanings of the terms quite well…
my opinion of what? american democRats?
-Imp
Whoa, huh? That’s a huge generalization there, Imp. I mean, one could just as easily say that the typical conservative in America wants a Christian theocracy, but I know for a fact that isn’t true because I happen to be friends with several people who think of themselves as conservative and I know for a fact that that isn’t their view, (granted that there are poeple who want a Christian theocracy, but in my experience, they’re a very vocal minority.)
that is what the term “liberal” means…
why do you think the democRats call themselves “progressives” and NOT liberals? because “liberal” is a ‘dirty’ word in american politics meaning just what I said it does…
and liberals do think of conservatives as you describe…
-Imp
pfff, a US democrat is about as ‘left’ as belgium’s outer-right wing 
Lord, I hate people who talk like Imp, liberal or conservative. All I’ve heard you do so far Imp is talk in broad Ad Hominems and nothing else.
Don’t mind Imp, he is a Liberal himself. Like many other Liberals, he believes that human beings are basically good in nature and therefore should be free to express their particular ‘goodness’.
Ask him if he supports Democracy in Iraq… he will give you a hearty “yes” whilst waving Old Glory over the graves of fallen soldiers. Ask him if the Iraqi people should be allowed to set up certain Socialist, government run industries as part of its infrastructure and he will yell “no” before pouncing on you and ripping out your eyes. Thats because Liberals love usury and open markets. Liberals love economics so much they often mistake capitalism for democracy, forgetting that one is a political system, the other is economic, and that the two need not go hand in hand.
A true Conservative might not think all of humanity is screwed up and stained with sin, but they do believe that human beings are far, far, far from perfect and that attaining real freedom is a slow, arduous process in which Humanity is slowly lifted up to being deserving of freedom. They do not believe in rights so much as obligations which allows humanity (or at least the people in a particular nation) to survive. At its extreme and most warped, one could say that a nation’s citizens are entirely obligated to the state for their existence. True conservatives are realists, in that experience informs them that human beings are not always so good and nice as to deserve freedom and rights to such an extent that our obligations to each other as human beings can be forgotten. If Imp (as I think he does) feels that no one possesses the “right” to have an abortion, then he is conservative (at least on that issue). Insofar as he believes a fetus is a human being.
But what has happened in modern politics is that issues have been seperated from their basic essential source for temporary political gain. Aristotle felt that man was both a political animal and an animal capable of employing reason to make moral choices. The divorce between morality and politics is a modern (ie. Liberal) invention. One which allows for the false dichotomy of Liberal and Conservative in a Liberal Democracy.
The idea that the distinction between liberal and conservative rests upon large or small government is political ploy by one group of liberals to malign another group. Neither group denies that human beings have certain fundamental rights, which, historically, is a Liberal idea, and something anathema to a classical conservative. The differences are really reflected in economic policy, but political ideology stems from one’s view of human nature (thus politics deals with the organization of human beings within the polis).
The growth of liberalism came about as the result of a variety of factors. One thing was that Monarchies had tied their authority to rule to the Church, as science challenged the Church, it also challenged the Monarchist’s authority. The Schism within the Catholic church and the Reformation left the individual with a different means to attain salvation. As the King of England could change faiths to get a better deal, so to could the lowly peasant, though not without great risk sometimes. Various technological improvements increased trade, and led not only a middle class of sorts, but also a large group of very wealthy non aristocrats who craved power along with their wealth. A system which left them obligated to a Lord that borrowed money from them seemed silly to say the least. Since Locke tied the idea of rights to God and extended said rights to property, this would result in a system where the wealthy could be wealthy and not have to bow before any man due to station of birth. I believe it is in the U.S. Constitution somewhere… titles of nobility are strictly forbidden. Add to this the various abuses occurring under the name of God or certain Kings or Lords or Barons, and you can see why the argument that every person possesses certain innate rights would be appealing to both the serf and the wealthy but politically powerless.
Every American who shoots a firework off on the Fourth of July, who waves a flag, who says that they respect such and such elected official because they were elected, who thinks rights (if not all rights, then at least some rights) are worth having, who believes freedom is a good thing is a
Lib
E
Ral
Because it is the Liberal worldview they support (at least in large part) And it is the life as informed by that view they wish to live. The idea that the word hinges on issues related entirely to economics is only showing you one brushstroke in a much larger painting. That goes for any number or combination of issues as well.
In Europe Imp would be classed as radically leftwing. Swings and roundabouts.
Economics is politics. Or at least a huge part of politics. Politics is the negotiation over the governance of space and time - yes? A deferred, institutionalised power game. When one is part of this struggle one cannot separate economics and politics as easily as one can as a verbal commentator…
All you’ve done here is uphold the boundary ‘liberal vs. conservative’ while misappropriating the terms. There is such a thing as a liberal conservative, you know…
Sticking words like ‘true’ before ‘conservative’ doesn’t make your assertion as to what a conservative ‘truly’ is any more true.
Says the one who upholds that False Dichotomy…
That divorce isn’t a modern (i.e. Liberal) invention. It goes back to Locke, if not earlier. The divorce is between the practise of faith (morals, Religious belief and so on) and the practise of reason (politics, economics and so forth).
I’d beg to differ… Classical Liberalism was conservative.
These days (in the liberal capitalist technocracy) the organisation of people isn’t politics. The organisation of space and time (deriving from a cosmology, rather than humanism) is what contemporary politics is all about.
It’s no longer about control of the means of production, it’s about control of the means of transferring information…
man, i must have gotten an entirely wrong idea bout him 
I mean in the sense that over here the sort of individualism to which Imp subscribes (inasmuch as he subscribes to anything, damn Humeans) would probably be called anarchistic or at least libertarian.
Perhaps according to Machiavelli, and then, only when it fits the ends of those in power or vying for it. I am told that, nowadays, Politics is simply the science of compromise. If you look at the term “politics” and note that it derives from the word “polis”, which I am sure you know was the term used for Greek city states, and the similarity to the word ‘polus’ or ‘polloi’, meaning many or the masses, in reference to people, any definition of politics which makes no mention of people is lacking in authenticity. A power game, with power over what, space and time? As it applies to whom?
I agree, insofar as politics deals with people, and I am not aware of any economic systems that, say, polar bears employ. But saying economics is politics is not the same as reducing politics down to economics. You see the difference? Democracy is not just capitalism. Democracy (or any political system) is not just an economic system. Even Communism, which sees all of history in terms like production and value, must make certain basic assumptions about human nature from which it follows that one economic system is better (according to Communists anyway) than another, as it applies to human beings.
Kinda like a jumbo shrimp?
I misappropriate nothing. Read Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, or any Political Philosopher or Philosopher who commented on politics from the classical through medieval period. Tell me where they sing the praises of democracy? Show me their valiant attempts to champion rights? Their calls for rebellion against injustice (well, maybe Augustine would, I doubt he would ever promote rebellion against the Church though). Well, Aquinas would say that laws requiring you to deny Christ and worship a pagan God are unjust and must be denounced. You travel back in time and tell him that you have a right, as supplied by your creator (God) to not worship God if you don’t want to and he would laugh in your face. You tell him that you have a right not to worship God because reason informs you that there exists such things as innate rights as a matter of natural law and he will say that revelation preceeds reason and that natural law bows to divine law.
So when I say “true” conservative after I mentioned “classical” conservatives what I am doing is saying that, the classical conservatives are the true conservatives. It is a big friggin leap to go from the view of human nature as promoted by the Church in Medieval times to the liberal view of human nature. Such a change was not incremental but radical. Thus the “conservatives” amongst todays “liberals” who do not see human nature as being basically sinful , possibly even evil without the sanctity of the church, are not conservative in the more classical sense. or, if you want to throw religion out the window, and look at human nature as Plato and Aristotle did, humans are animalistic, and only our capacity for reason can make us more than animals. Just as Aristotle thought all non Greeks were Barbarians, he felt what seperated a Greek from a Barbarian was that Greeks had demonstrated a capacity for reason, Barbarians had not. Just as Aristotle also believed that some men were born natural slaves, in that, by their nature, they show an incapacity to reason, or are ruled entirely by their animal urges, thus the Greeks should rule over them. You may probably already know what Plato thought about Democracy, but if you didn’t, here goes:
IT SUCKS
In his ideal world, if you and I showed a propensity for philosophical dialogue and displayed an understanding of a priori concepts, we would rule. Every night we would tag the likes of, hmm, Arendt and Liquid Angel; (hey, this doesn’t sound so bad 
) and then we would think big thoughts all whilst eating grapes. So long as the polloi, unable to master all their urges, got along and were at least half ass happy, we could try to at create an environment where excellence was preferred over mediocrity, i.e. none of this all men are created equal bullshit.
That was his ideal political system, based on his view of human nature.
It is modern when compared to Plato and Aristotle. It is modern in that it is the view that is still championed today. It goes back to Machiavelli, when he urges the Medici to make use of religion to serve the ends of political power. Know what Augustine said about religion? That it should be seperate from politics and concerns of the state. Gasp. And they made him a Saint?!?! But, he argued, correctly, that if religion was involved in affairs of the state, ie., engaged with with the sinful practices of this wretched and sinful world, the State would corrupt the Church, and not the other way around. See, he claims that the governance of people on this world is automatically corrupt because human nature is corrupt.
That isn’t a “Liberal” view of human nature. You can’t go, “I know you are corrupt and sinful, by the way, you now have the right to own guns” and expect to live long. There are no innate rights in the classical view. What you have is simply a chance to become more fully human and less animalistic through reason, or a chance to attain salvation in Heaven. Because if you are human, you are already nearly consumed by irrational passions, or if you exist on earth, you are already corrupted.
Like calling a shrimp a jumbo shrimp doesn’t change the fact that its a shrimp? True is just an adjective, real truth rests in the term conservative, but there truly are Liberal Conservatives?
What is a Conservative? Well, lets see, we have the term conserve, which I guess means save, or moderation. Caution maybe? Tradition… ohh?
Why would I call Plato and Aristotle conservative? Well, they lived in a Democracy (technically the closest man has come to a deomcracy). There was the typical upheavals going on between the poor and the rich. (I throw this out there for the economics is politics crowd. Aristotle thought if Athens had a middle class it could serve as a buffer between the haves and the have nots. Pretty swift guy that Aristotle). For them the question wasn’t couched in economic terms, that man always wants more seemed applicable to both the rich and the poor. If you just give him what he wants, and dress it up all fancy and call it rights, you have not made him better, rather you have simply satisfied his desire for the moment.
Eventually this man will take his “rights” and want more. If he has less than the next guy, he will want his rights too. So that, when Locke argued about rights, the argument was meant to apply only to the classes that possessed property. They would make the rules, have the rights, and those without property could just go along with it. Kind of like the White, Male, property owners that wrote the U.S. Constitution. In our hyperbole about all men are created equal, inalienable rights, freedom, and so on, we forget that this country was built on the corrupt practices of slavery and murder. What rights you have are to literally fuck someone over.
So, again, what makes Plato and Aristotle so Conservative? The mere idea of rights is anathema to them. Plato doesn’t describe injustice as someone violating someone else’s rights. You have obligations to people beyond just giving them what they want (their rights). Thus his argument about the old friend wanting to have his borrowed knife back to go do murder. Giving someone what they think they are due isn’t justice, it isn’t moral, and it isn’t a position neither Plato nor Aristotle would champion. Ditto for Augustine and Aquinas.
The first proponent of rights (that I know of) was Hobbes. All he argued was that Humans have the right to survive (because it is the necessity of survival which requires his Leviathon of a government). This, in turn, comes from his view of human nature, which he describes as thus in a state of nature: “nasty, brutish and short”. So, even the first person to mention rights doesn’t think human beings are all that and a bag of chips. Perhaps because this was the prevailing view even at the times he wrote Leviathon, as this was the view presented to the West by guys like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas. And it was this view, ultimately, that the Liberals were rebelling against.
Let me repeat that:
It was this view that the Liberals were rebelling against.
Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Jefferson, etc etc etc Luther (to a degree) and so on.
See, to me, a worldview and tradition that lasts for nearly 2,000 years is the truly conservative one. All this talk about jumbo shrimp, and socialists and Adam Smith’s love child and such from the last 400 years or so is but a fraction. Yet just a few more strokes in a larger painting (well maybe more than a few, but it damn sure aint the whole picture).
So, when I say Imp is a Liberal, from the Latin Liber or Liberalis, meaning Free, I am saying that Imp thinks Freedom is a good thing. Historically, I have roughly 1,600 years to your roughly 400 that says Freedom isn’t a good thing. When I say modern, I mean modern in comparison to the classical view (which is why I began early on by mentioning classical conservatives). Imp thinks Freedom is good because, obviously, his view of human nature is such that he thinks human beings are best served by being free. It follows then, that he must also believe that there are at least some rights Humans must possess to insure that freedom. Again, this view is the Liberal one.
So, even modern conservatives are liberals. Perhaps even more staunchly so… as it is the liberal view they hope to conserve. I freely admit that many people have abused the term conservative and liberal (usually for their own ends) such that the real distinction behind them is lost to most people. The truth is, to return to economics is politics, even Socialists are Liberal, if they believe that humans should be free, or possess some certain rights. Ergo, the nordic countries, with their Socialist styled economic and social policies and democratic elections, are Liberal.
Who was a classical liberal? Sparticus? 
The Grachi brothers?
Speaking of the Grachi, and to show how terminology seems to ebb and flow in regards to political labels, I approve of this article:
geocities.com/jefferywinkler/politerm.txt
I am sorry, but…
People are Politics. It is what the word politics means or refers to. The term itself becomes empty and meaningless without people, as, no offense, your definition shows. I agree that modern politics is empty and vacuous, but it isn’t that it is devoid of people, it is just that people are empty and vacuous. A classical conservative might say “I told you so” before going off to have a bath prepared by his favorite slave.
As your definition also shows, this is all tied into the whole classical conservative view on excellence (go read a Satyr essay, he covers it well) and how it is that what we have now is not only meaningless, but meaningless mediocrity. We are going to organize space and time itself but people won’t be involved. Of course not, involving people might infringe upon their rights.
Wisps of shadow on the wall of a cave… Different words, same story. And that is the thing, see, why the Classical Conservatives are ultimately correct. The names may change, we may think we have rights and freedoms, but human nature hasn’t changed. Because there is something inflexible within us, even if it is that we are all just naturally pieces of shit with delusions of humanity, or if we do possess some means of improving ourselves. The overwhelming majority of people don’t see it, or don’t feel it, or don’t know about it, or wouldn’t accept it anyway. And in the Liberal world, that is as good as saying it doesn’t exist. Kinda like how people don’t exist in a definition of politics.
Dear Gate Control Theory
What a spurious argument. Just because a definition doesn’t have a long-standing and traceable etymological history doesn’t mean that the definition is meaningless. You’ve leapt from one to the other without explaining why. No offence, but this is nonsense as far as arguments go.
Just because I don’t mention the word ‘people’ in my definition doesn’t mean people aren’t affected by the governance of space and time. You are (as per usual) leaping from something linguistic to something actual (i.e. empirical) without explaining why and how…
Nor is capitalism, that’s my point. When I said one cannot in politics separate politics and economics as simply as one can do so as a verbal commentator I was of course saying that nor can one as easily seperate capitalism from democracy…
By that reckoning every statement about politics contains the implication ‘as it applies to human beings’ and as such your criticism of my definition of politics is ludicrous…
No, like the present Conservative party in the UK or the equivalent in Australia or Japan…
They don’t, for the most part. What has that got to do with the existence of liberal conservatives and your misappropriation of political terms?
You are confusing liberalism with liberal humanism (the most popular form of present-day liberalism). Liberalism doesn’t necessitate rights, though of course liberals tend to employ rights-based arguments. Liberalism is first and foremost a political philosophy of the individual, as such it has existed since at least Ancient Greece (which had the notion of individualism, if not the modern notion of free individualism).
As would most Christian conservatives these days… What’s your point?
Also, I never argue on the basis of rights because they are nothing more than rhetoric. When someone asks (as aspacia tends to when backed into a corner) ‘what gives you the right to question my views?’ (or something similar) one can always respond with ‘what gives you the right to question my right to question your views’…
Sure, he wasn’t a liberal. I don’t see your point.
Not when a lot of the basis for it (innate qualities that define ‘being human’, the notion of individuality, the doctrine of free will from Christianity…) already existed in popular belief…
You seem to think that contemporary liberalism had no precedent in the pre-modern (i.e. pre-1400 or so) world. I assure you that it did. The spectre of Liberalism had haunted Europe for a long time…
You seem to have missed out Christianity’s influence on politics and on political philosophy entirely…
How odd, given that we’re discussing predominantly European history…
And the early Christians (who weren’t exact contemporaries of the Ancient Greeks, but near enough) believed in the liberal notion of individual free will that is not constrained by innate human evil. Or some of them did, some of them didn’t.
You generally find that philosophers from aristocratic backgrounds don’t think much of democracy. Doesn’t matter whether they are long-dead greeks or contemporaries of you and I…
Yeah, but Plato was a quack. He thought that reason was the answer to all of life’s problems but he could never define what reason actually was…
Which isn’t a necessary component of liberalism, only of liberalism post-J S Mill.
Another similarity with liberal humanism, a political view derived from a notion of human nature…
There is a mass proliferation of political views that are championed today that range over the whole conceivable spectrum…
He wasn’t a liberal either. What’s your point?
Not ‘rights’, no. But that isn’t the be-all and end-all of liberalism as a political philosophy. The same move from views of human nature to prescriptions regarding politics existed. The notion of individualism existed. The notion of free will existed.
Yes, I get all that. But that wasn’t the sole philosophy of ancient times…
Well, they exist. They call themselves that. They act out a politics that can be seen to have roots in both traditions.
Stop trying to assess the meaning of words according to their etymology and you’ll understand a lot more. Etymology isn’t worth much in a world where meaning is always provisional, never complete.
I’ve no idea. Such a word just doesn’t seem applicable. They were Greek, for one thing, they wouldn’t know what the heck ‘conservative’ means…
They were right to think that. But I don’t think that makes them conservative.
Look at what has happened to the feminist movement…
Or like the African tribes who actively participated in helping the Europeans to enslave their neighbours…
‘this’ country? I’m not saying that my country wasn’t to an extent built on slavery, oppression, colonisation, murder, but it was built on other things as well. We wouldn’t have been able to colonise the African continent if it weren’t for having developed superior weaponry during the continual war that was Europe under Divine Monarchial rule…
Also, slavery wasn’t seen as corrupt at the time. It was seen as par for the course. The Europeans had spent centuries oppressing their own people (9 out of 10 people was a penniless peasant) so when they found a bunch of funny coloured people it was only natural to oppress them as well, especially if they could benefit financially from it.
How bizarre. Do you honestly think that belief or not in rights is the defining characteristic when asking whether or not someone is/was a conservative?
Sure, none of them thought much to rights (though they all had views about man’s inherent nature…). So what? The invention of the notion of rights isn’t the defining feature of liberalism or other-than-conservativism.
I think you’ve got a very one-dimensional view of liberalism, possibly due to your national handicap…
So being a conservative means not believing in rights and belonging to a long-standing tradition? That’s your definition of a conservative?
I’ll repeat once more than individualism (which is a more key part of liberalism than innate rights) has existed for as long as any of the philosophies you mention.
I prefer to use contemporary definitions when trying to make sense to a contemporary audience. It just makes life and language a bit easier.
Conveniently ignoring the Christian doctrine of Free Will (which of course Nietzsche rebelled against in The Anti-Christ, thus demonstrating how some modern philosophers don’t think freedom, liberalism, democracy and so on are a good idea…) which has existed at least since the writing of the New Testament. But nevermind, eh?
Ahhh, now I understand your most crucial mistake. You think that there was only one classical view, that the Greeks had some sort of consensus on these philosophical issues. You couldn’t be more wrong on this point. ‘The classical view’ indeed…
I’ve never heard Imp talk about human nature, except to argue that most of them are weak and greedy. I don’t think his favouring of freedom is something he’d defend philosophically, I think he’d just say that it makes his life easier to think of the world like that. That’s all well and good for personal belief but it isn’t enough for a foundation for a political philosophy.
I’ve never heard Imp argue for rights either. Well I have, but I think he was only doing it to get some leverage in a battle, rather than as a key part of his position. When asked about it he tends to give the ‘one has the right to do whatever one has the power to do, no more, no less’ answer from Nietzsche’s philosophy.
One doesn’t need to believe in rights (civil or innate) to be a liberal, though I’ll grant you a great many liberals do use such arguments. Individual freedom of the will is the crucial idea in the liberal tradition, though of course the notion appears in lots of other traditions.
This is one thing on which we agree, though probably for different reasons.
And the proliferation of communications media occured at a time when the two were at war, so every subsequent media generation has tended to view them as a false dichotomy…
It depends on the type of socialist. If we’re talking the British or French socialism of the 20th century then yes, to an extent they are still liberals of a sort. But Stalin couldn’t give a fig for individual freedom.