What is "liberal"?

…as in a “liberal arts” education. But that’s different from the political meaning, which I think is what Jenndue meant to be asking about.

There are political positions associated with liberal and conservative but these platforms that change over time. Defining liberal and conservative as agreeing with their respective platforms is circular and no more definitive than defining art as things artists make or music or sounds musicians make. In the most general sense liberal refers to the position that we should should reform our ideas and ways of doing things. The conservative position is that we should keep with our traditional ideas and ways of doing things. Liberalism looks forward, conservationism looks back. Naturally everyone agrees that there are traditions that need to be preserved and legacies that need to change. Those more dedicated to tradition than reform lean conservative while those more dedicated to reform than tradition lean liberal.

Liberals say that they are progressive, and historically they have been when it comes to civil rights, and womens rights. I for one believe that there are traditions that have been beneficial to mankind for thousands of years, and before we just flush them down the toilet, everyone’s voice should be heard.

The opposite of neoliberal .

Sorry I didn’t have time for a more substantive answer before. As filletofspam says, the problem with trying to define the political difference between liberal and conservative is that their meaning, like that of other words, varies with time - and, just to confuse things further, with place. On the one hand, American (by which I mean the USA) conservatism is in some respects liberal by European standards, because we have no history here of either monarchism or the feudal social tradition in which European conservatism is rooted. On the other hand, much European liberalism is conservative by American standards, because of divergent developments in the early 20th century. In the USA the liberal tradition evolved from its classical (free-market) origins into the “social liberalism” championed especially by the New Deal, which preserved capitalism from its own excesses of class polarization. But the equivalent in European politics was “social democracy,” in which what had formerly been revolutionary socialist movements adopted strictly legal and electoral political means. Since the state’s role as market “referee” was being promoted in Europe mainly by this new reformist socialism, political liberalism there retained more of a classical, free-market capitalist orientation than it did in the USA.

American liberals and conservatives have for the most part always agreed on the liberal principles of individual liberty, private property, limited constitutional government, and - contrary to filletofspam’s account - forward-looking reformism (which, for both liberals and conservatives here, coexists alongside the desire to return to an idealized past). They differ more over two other core principles of liberalism - egalitarianism and universality - and over the extent to which government (mainly the federal government) ought to actively promote these latter principles, especially when they may conflict with property rights.

Liberals and conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic also disagree over another question, not previously mentioned here, that has been at the heart of the liberal-conservative divide from its earliest origins: Can the moral character of individuals be raised through improved social conditions, or do people have a tendency toward evil that cannot be ameliorated by human efforts? (I’ll let you guess which of those is the more conservative view and which is more liberal.)

A big qualification: The whole liberal-conservative spectrum is one way (not the only way) of organizing shared conceptual categories so that we can talk about some big questions regarding society, politics, justice, etc., more or less coherently. But like any such “big picture,” it can serve to suppress as much as it reveals. Lots of folks, including me, find it not to be a satisfactory account or a very useful framework.

Oops…Liberal is a wide term when you think the word is standing alone :) I missed the fine print…LOL

Liberal in terms of politics…You Hayyim and Filletospam, gave a great accounting of it. I especially agree with your end comments…. But like any such “big picture,” it can serve to suppress as much as it reveals. Lots of folks, including me, find it not to be a satisfactory account or a very useful framework.

While America has never had a true feudal system most of the early colonists came here as indentured servants. We also have a history of slavery where slaves were forced to work the owner’s land. I also find it interesting that conservative policies are leading us to more of a feudal arrangement where most of the wealth is concentrated in a small number of individuals and most people effectively have no property and are wage slaves. Currently the wealthiest 20% of Americans have 93% of the wealth. The top 5% have 70% of the wealth and the top 1% have 42% of the wealth (depends on how wealth is calculated; most statistics I see point to an even more lopsided distribution of wealth). Looked at from the other perspective 80% of Americans only have 7% of the wealth. Conservative policies have only benefited the wealthiest few percent of Americans while everyone has been asked to work harder, longer, and for lower wages and less job security. The wealthy usually get most of their wealth through inheritance and capital gains which are taxed at a lower rate than labor and many conservatives with to eliminate taxes on inheritance (“death tax”) and capital gains all together and shift more of the tax burden on everyone else.

As I said, egalitarianism vs. property rights. I’m not sure what your point is about US indentured servitude and slavery. These existed in the context of a market-based economy in which slaves, unlike feudal serfs, were considered alienable property to which one had no legally or ecclesiastically enforceable obligations. Hence the “humane” aspects of feudalism on which conservative political philosophy later drew were utterly lacking.

Lol, thanks, Marisha! “Hello-o-o-o-o…” {;^)