You misspelled “progressives.” Liberals are capitalist conservative corpos and actively enable all of these problems.
Fucking THANK YOU! Liberalism and progressivism are not related. “Liberal” is a pejorative made popular by neoliberal cockroach Ronald Reagan.
People who believe in capitalism (ie liberals) can still want all these things. Look at the Nordic countries as examples. Ultimately leftism is the way to go but despite what the tankies on here scream about every liberal is not a fascist.
As I understand geopolitical definitions, “progressives” are the leftmost slice of the larger “liberal” envelope.
It’s like you’re saying, “No, bugs don’t fly. Just look at this centipede!”
That and/or No True Scotsman.
Naw, in the US Liberalists stand in the way of Progressives. They are not on the same team because one is radical in nature and the other is conservative.
While the strict definitions will muddy these two terms most people who understand what is going on resist this trap.
Never heard of the term “Liberalist” before. Is that some hip new way to refer to liberals?
By every definition of “progressive” and “liberal” I know, they overlap.
A liberalist is someone who advocates liberalism.
Yes, as I said traditional definitions will muddy these waters. That is why I said in the US.
Liberalists regularly work against progressives in US politics. If they are the same then why are they opposed?
A liberalist is someone who advocates liberalism.
… bruh.
So to you, a person who advocates fascism is a fascistist?
Liberalists regularly work against progressives in US politics. If they are the same then why are they opposed?
Because they are on opposite ends of the same area of the political spectrum, obviously. Same reason groypers don’t get along with MAGA.
It is the definition of the word. Not sure where you are going. You would prefer me to use liberal instead of liberalist…? The problem is a liberal doesn’t necessarily advocate for liberalism. A liberalist does. A progressive advocates for progressive policies.
Progressives want to reform liberal systems that are broken. You can keep pretending they are the same all you want, but they are diametrically opposed in the US.
It’s just inane splitting of hairs - a pointless distinction.
What do you call a fascist that spreads fascism? A fascist.
What do you call a fascist that doesn’t spread fascism? A fascist.
LMAO.
Hey, how about this hot take: Pedophiles should not be a fucking head of state.
Oh, so now conservatives can’t be leaders at all?! Totally unfair!
Woah, woah… That’s a bit too radical. Reel it in a few notches and we can have a grown-up discussion /s
That’s a good’n right there.
It’s so lovely watching pedantic, ideologically uncompromising nitwits “scorpion and frogging” us to the end of civilization.
See you all in hell!
I thought you were overreacting. I’m sorry.
The shift in the meaning of Liberalism in representative government started in the 1970s as a response to Stagflation and Reaganism.
When talking about Liberalism in the context of modern western representative governments it now generally refers to the belief that liberal free market economics is the best way to a prosperous society (a rising tide lifts all boats, if people don’t want something they won’t buy it, the market has a role in government).
This is called the Third Way or Third Way Economics. This was when the belief that a good society is created by providing a good quality of life ended, and the new viewpoint that a good society is created through creating and protecting the best condition for business started (meaning deregulation, privatisation, a two tier legal system, privatization of profits, socialization of costs).
In terms of modern representative government, that’s what liberalism now means. Liberals believe the protection of business conditions leads to a prosperous society and quality of life.
This put the government in the role of serving whatever businesses and industries said they needed, and we’ve been there ever since.
Well said. I was reading through all the points in the post thinking liberals don’t believe any of this stuff, save for maybe a couple of the points.
I don’t agree with the “especially veterans” part of the no one should be homeless. Veteran status, in itself, does not make one more worthy of a basic necessity of life. What I will agree with is that the government has a responsibility to make sure everyone is house especially veterans. The government owes them more than others for serving them. The universe does not.
It’s a key point to engage the moderates and the right, but fighting it risks sliding down the “all lives matter” slope.
The government hired them and fucked them up; the government owes them support. We (royal we) ‘let’ the government get to this point, even if it’s not specifically you and I. Our taxes going to that end is far from a travesty. Let’s cut back a little on defense and use the savings to prop up the guys that got fucked up on it’s behalf.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But if you’re framing the homelessness problem as a veteran homelessness problem then the applied solutions will likely leave non-veterans that still need help without. All homelessness is a problem. That is not the same as “all lives matter” because homelessness isn’t primarily a problem that veterans face. They’re estimated to make up 5 percent of the homeless population.
The government does have a particular responsibility to vets, and should be fixing that. But they have a responsibility to non-vets too. And the things that cause homelessness for veterans causes it for everyone else too. We can and should be helping veterans by addressing the root causes that effect everyone. But any solution that only results in helping vets (like supplying only veterans housing) when they could be helping everyone is unacceptable, particularly as plenty of people would consider the job done so long as the homeless that remain aren’t vets.
You mistook my answering the veteran part only as framing, no, we can easily afford to house anyone that is willing to be housed. (some homeless will refuse help/treatment even if they need it)
Access to clean drinking water should be a right.
That would require an illiberal regulation of the commons to protect it from individual autonomy, and Liberals HATE the commons and love individual autonomy
I’ve seen your post history, You don’t have the authority to speak for “Liberals”
At this point I’m increasingly convinced the purpose of lemmy.ml is to strawman liberal ideology to make a performance of cutting it down.
Every time I stumble upon one of their memes and disagree with a slice of how it portrays liberals (ostensibly including myself), I’m vivisected for it.
LOL. Liberal isn’t a fucking identity. It’s a political philosophy with a rich and storied history, major foundational texts, and actual meaning. The fact that you think only Liberals can talk about Liberalism is exactly the sort of brainrot that makes contemporary Liberals so fucking intolerable and unmoored from reality
trolling isn’t an identity either but man do you try :)
blocked, move along
Way to prove the point
What if I told you that words change with modern context? Perhaps instead of clinging to your Ivory Tower and poring over your historical “texts” you could pull your head out of your ass long enough to recognize that modern liberals have different values and a more distinct identity than the original label would suggest.
Isn’t it funny that I am the one taking an international and historical perspective, developing my understanding of political terms from the actual historical and contemporary movements from all parts of the political spectrum and how their own histories are present in their current formations but you are the one saying “don’t do any of that just sit in this room with these specific people at this time and define everything in terms of what we say about ourselves without any interaction with anything else” and you think I am the one with my head up my own ass. You are literally smelling your own farts in a locked room and telling me that I don’t actually understand your fart smell because I won’t lock myself in the room with you.
Liberals love to accuse “the right” of being anti-intellectual but the minute anyone actually studies politics internationally and across time and domains liberals become the anti-intellectuals.
I had an argument with a co-worker who joined the Young Democrats about the lobby part.
Both parties want lobbies, BAD. My argument is that 90% of the issues with the parties stem from bribery and lobbying. Those positions should not attract the mega-wealthy, they should not provide unchecked power to make those people and their friends mega-wealthy. Those positions should pull large salaries and no extra benefits. They should be on the same level of healthcare as any enterprise company.
Both parties want lobbies, but most citizens do not; most actual voters, when asked directly about the issue, oppose money in politics and want to repeal Citizens United.
Actual lobbying is a good thing. It’s informing a politician about an issue you want addressed.
During my wife’s masters degree she had to lobby to a state representative. The issue she was lobbying was not putting parents who were convicted of non-violent crimes in prison.
Actual lobbying rarely happens, though.
Lobbying should be done by citizens, lobbyists that bribe politicians should be laid off. The former is a citizen, the latter is their job which should be a no no.
Well, kinda. Lobbying can be about simply informing a politician
Who lobbies. Corporations, trade associations, labor unions, nonprofits, universities, cities and states, and foreign governments all lobby. Some hire outside lobbying firms (often staffed by former members of Congress, congressional aides, or agency officials); others employ their own in-house government affairs staff. Last year, external firms took in $2.76 billion versus $2.46 billion for in-house operations, the first time on record that firms accounted for the majority of federal lobbying spending.
2.76 Billion.
Other sites put lobbying over 5 billion in 2005
There are only 13k registered lobbyists.
It is not a “good thing” that billionaires and their corporations pay billions to influence law.
That’s why I specified actual lobbying. Most of those companies are just covers for bribery.
But lobbying and bribery aren’t inherently mutually inclusive.
Since the label is an issue for some, let’s call them healthy policies, and then whichever platform supports the most healthy policies, vote for them, and if they get enough majority to pass the healthy policies we all do better! This is how to advance, not swing back and forth flippantly, and ruin progress each time they go maga, and then complain about shooting self in foot, ffs.
The label is an issue for anyone whose studied political history past the 1970s when when Stagflation and Reganomics occurred and The Third Way became the dominant “liberal” position/meaning in representative government. Aka economic liberalization.
That prosperity comes from protecting and serving the best business conditions, and that that is serving the people (rather than the previous model, that prosperity comes from serving and protecting a good quality of life/conditions for the people directly).
With this political belief came market deregulation, privatization of public services, and markets as partners or cooperators of government.
Oh, look! It’s a long list of things conservatives hate!
But do all liberals really feel this way or have they spent the last 50 years entrenching the system that celebrates all this shit?
They’ve spent the last 200 years creating and entrenching it
*250
True. I was rounding.
…and also before then. Since the beginning of society, really
Fair
It’s a very archiac use of Lieralism, when it could mean Social Liberalism still. Since the 1970s Liberalism has come to mean market liberalism, and the belief that the free market is the best path to a prosperous society.
Pick your poison
What’s are you trying to say by commenting that?
It looks like OP has upset a lot of the divisionists on lemmy by positing that liberals actually want things they agree with….
“GASP! That can’t be! Because we are supposed to hate liberals because that what we keep telling ourselves to do! How can they possibly want things that are good when we keep tellingbus they want things that are bad! Owwwww! My braaaaiiiin!”
So there aren’t a whole bunch of Social Liberals in representative government today. Most tend to be Neoliberals.
Since the stagflation of the 70s, Liberalism has mostly been about the belief that government isn’t there to provide a good quality of life, with good public services and conditions. Liberalism and neoliberals in the modern usage tend to now believe that the government is there to provide the best market conditions for businesses.
This shift in meaning was called “the third way”, and includes people like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
This shift put the government in the drivers seat of being king makers to the market, of working closely with markets and industries to hear what they want and provide it for them.
This is why establishment Democrats are generally considered center-right… The ones not fitting that mold (who perhaps still believe government should provide quality of life conditions) are labeled progressives.
But generally Liberalism today, in terms of representative government, is the belief that good market conditions must be protected and upheld for businesses, in order for society to prosper. That was the resolution/response to reganism and stagflation.
lol…. Right.
From Wikipedia:
“Under the centre-left Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1983 to 1996, the Bob Hawke and Paul Keating governments pursued many economic policies associated with economic rationalism such as floating the Australian Dollar in 1983, reductions in trade tariffs, taxation reforms, changing from centralised wage-fixing to enterprise bargaining, restrictions on trade union activities including on strike action and pattern bargaining, the privatisation of government-run services and enterprises such as Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank and wholesale deregulation of the banking system. Keating also proposed a Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 1985, but this was scrapped due to its unpopularity amongst both the Labor Party and electorate.[citation needed] The party also desisted from other reforms such as wholesale labour market deregulation, the eventual GST, the privatisation of Telstra and welfare reform. The Hawke-Keating governments have been considered by some as laying the groundwork for the later development of both the New Democrats in the United States and New Labour in the United Kingdom.[33][34]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way
So yes, it is correct to say that these behaviors define the (current) New Democrats and New Labour political positions that are in power in the establishment left of many western democracies. They have been the establishment left for 30 odd years now.
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The connection isn’t the thing being proven. The character is… And you can’t really deny that New Labour and the New Democrats are right leaning in their fiscal conservativism:
The New Democrats, often referred to as Moderate Democrats, are a center to center-left and liberal faction within the United States Democratic Party. They are seen as culturally liberal on social issues while being fiscally conservative on certain economic issues.[6] New Democrats dominated the party from the late 1980s through the early-2010s and continue to be a large coalition in the modern Democratic Party.[7][8][9]
New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland and the leadership of Blair and Brown as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell’s media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party’s development of Anthony Giddens’ Third Way which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equal opportunity and believed in the use of markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice.
Anyone alive during the 1990s saw the waves of privatizations being done by establishment left governments. So arguing that people shouldn’t believe their lying eyes isn’t a way out… there are countless examples.
To deny that is to play a game of historical revisionism. It’s not something you can just hand wave away.
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Because they have a page specifically on conspiracy theories about UFOs?
…I often hear right wingers say you can’t trust Wikipedia. But again, I’m talking about the privatization and economic rationism in the establishment left which aligns it with fiscal conservativism and crony capitalism.
You seem to think this is a discussion about Wikipedia. It’s not.
Leftists on the Fediverse hate hearing when liberals agree with them. It’s very confusing to me, a mostly rational person.
Also liberals, “But the parliamentarian…”
Actually, that’s a good question to see if you live in a real shithole country:
Are you afraid that your child might be shot while at school?
Throughout Latin America, nowadays you’ll hear the USA being referred to as “Disparos Unidos”, which roughly translates as “United Shootings of America”
Accurate.
There are some REAL shithole countries where that never happens :) You need to raise that bar a little :)
Sorry, but I can’t imagine a lower bar.
Americans have normalized the fear of their children being shot at school. What could be lower than that?
Ah, yes, having a mortal disease and being unable to afford the medical treatment…
Healthcare should be available for all, not a luxury for the rich
Politicians should not dictate medical decisions for any person
Ignoring the shameless virtue signaling, it’s amazing to me how so many people can honestly think these two ideas can exist together.
Easy: government pays doctors to work … and then fucks off, does nothing else.
Got any more unsolvable dilemmas for me? I have a few minutes to spare.
Never thought about it that way. I always healthcare system management, funding, and government representatives would be the hard parts.
I can think of any number of ways to reconcile them. But they all require a functioning government.
Which is why all developed countries do this, except the U.S.
Which is why all developed countries do this, except the U.S.
Which is a pretty large barrier. They have government healthcare, but there’s enormous waste and politicization. The US healthcare system is fucked, but we can do better than that.
Because if there’s one country without waste and politicization in the health “care” system, it’s the US.
You’re a fucking clown mate 🤡
It means that the government should fund healthcare, and have no place in the treatment of any individual. That is a conversation between doctors and patients
😁Can I get a fuck yeah?!??
FUCK YEAH!
Give me an F!
Fuck yeah you can.
Much better
Thanks for fixing it, much better.
Beautiful.
take my upvote
Cosigned
Lobbyists are not necessarily a problem. Lobbyists for corporate interests are usually a problem. But there are lobbyists for non-profits, unions, and advocacy groups, too. Their job is to be a face to face to those with political power and government authority to advocate for some interest. Those interests are can be a net good for everyone. They can bring awareness to issues, new perspectives on issues, and provide a voice for those who may otherwise be ignored or lost in the noise. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. When bribery gets involved, or behind the scene deals, or when lobbyists get to write the laws to financially benefit their employers at others’ expense, that is the problem we often see with lobbyists.
Update: y’all hate some nuance, huh.
But there are lobbyists for non-profits, unions, and advocacy groups, too.
Correct, but those interest groups should be allowed some kind of formal consultative role in the political process, rather than being forced to throw money around
The lobbyist is the consultative role. Their job is to consult. The only money that needs thrown around to lobby is the salary of the lobbyist. Now because we have a corrupt system that does not suffiently enforce the law, plenty of lobbyists throw around money to gain favors and deals with government officials, and that obviously should neither be the expectation or even allowable. But that doesn’t made a paid role as a person who job is to advocate for some cause inherently a problem, so long as they do so ethically and, ideally, for a worthy cause.
So, I think the people doing that job should be making standard working class wages, and they should, for example, be elected by their respective interest group organisations to a formal legislative body that consults on and can propose legislation, but not pass it.
Like the house of Lords, but instead of being full of rich people named Baroness Killthepoor, it’s an actually useful body.
Lobbyists are an informal adhoc means of essentially legalizing bribery, that has been codified over time. While legitimate good might come from that system, as you’ve pointed out, some kind of formal democratic system by which formalise and democratize that consultative role should be enacted.
That’s not a the worst idea in premise, but the logistics of that is a concern for me.
Who decides who is allowed to be a formal interest group with a vote in the body? Is anyone allowed to form any group that has equal voting power? That is a terrible idea for so many reasons I can think of. Is it chosen by the legislature or executive? That gives it a ton of room for corruption, favoritism, etc. Are they restricted to one group per area of interest? If not then you could have proposals passed by the sheet number of co-interested individual interest groups alone. If not, then who decides what is a distinct enough interest to allow a new group?
That being said, the entire system being an above board process, publically accessible and answerable, would already be a dramatic improvement over the current lobbying practices, so… no matter how bad a mess, it likely would never be worse.
You’re thinking within the confines of the suboptimal system we currently have. What if lobbying wasn’t useful because there was no central authority figure to plead with? What if nobody’s voice gets lost in the noise because the people who can help are near enough to hear them?
You may have missed it, but this is an anarchist take, so your argument doesn’t really apply, whether it’s true or not.I’m not an anarchist. And we don’t live in an anarchy. And we will never see a true long term anarchist society of any real scale in our lifetime. That is fine if you are talking about some idealistic utopian goal. But I’m talking about the world we live in now.
And they didnt say that they shouldn’t be necessary or viable because there is no central goverment authority to advocate to. They said they shouldn’t be allowed. Those are two different stances (and not very anarchist to talk of disallowing advocacy roles).
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How does “people should not like in poverty” fit with anarchy? I’m asking out of curiosity, not to be contentious.
Supporting unemployed or disadvantaged needs collectivism, some system to contribute to people in need, which then also needs some kind of tax collection and governance. Do anarchists expect individuals to support people in need as their own independent choice?
How does “people should not like in poverty” fit with anarchy? I’m asking out of curiosity, not to be contentious.
Rich vs poor is a garbage social hierarchy.
Supporting unemployed or disadvantaged needs collectivism, some system to contribute to people in need, which then also needs some kind of tax collection and governance.
This is just capitalist/statist assumptions within the hegemonic narrative.
People don’t need “some system” to solve poverty. People need to end the current system that creates and depends on poverty.
Poverty is (supposedly) a made-up metric in result of capitalism. If capitalism no longer exists any worker gets enough to escape poverty just by working
How? How is that enforced? How are resources distributed? How can any of that actually work in practice?
Supposedly
I do not defend this statement
Yeah. See. You can’t ask lemmy “anarchists” questions. They only know how to yell at you about shit that only works in their heads.
