• saltesc@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 day ago

    It’s been years and I don’t think I’ll ever learn what a “liberal” is in US language. Afaict it’s got nothing to do with being a liberal, it’s just a slur used if someone is left or right of your position.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      23 hours ago

      I don’t think I’ll ever learn what a “liberal” is in US language

      Don’t worry, almost no Americans will either.

      If you want to know what it ACTUALLY means in terms of 2026 politics, it’s basically Neoliberalism.

      The ultra-capitalist ideology originated by the likes of Thatcher and Reagan and later dressed up as “compassionate but responsible” by the likes of the Clintons and Tony Blair in order to conceal that the leftmost realistic choice presented to voters is ruthless and authoritarian capitalism with a veneer of mostly empty promises from candidates to protect vulnerable groups of people from the very people funding their campaigns.

    • Tiral@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 day ago

      It’s just a word the conservatives throw around because they think it’s a slur or something.

      It’s kinda like how “liberals” just call anything facist they don’t like without knowing what it is.

      As a “liberal” myself who spent nearly 10 years in China, they have no God damn clue what a fascist country actually looks like.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 day ago

      Socially progressive capitalists. The right thinks they’re too socialist, and the left thinks they’re too capitalist.

    • Hapankaali@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 day ago

      In US language, “liberal” is used pejoratively by people who call themselves conservative but are actually against conservatism to describe people who are not liberals, but are instead less conservative than the actual liberals, who are found primarily in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party.

      Hope that clears it up.

    • kylie_kraft@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 day ago

      That’s because there’s not one single definition, especially on Lemmy.

      To most people in the US, it’s anyone politically left of center. Primarily Democrats.

      To leftists, a liberal is anyone who espouses capitalism. Republicans are liberals because they fucking love capitalism. Democrats are liberals because they believe that, despite its faults, capitalism is the best system and that it can be improved with reform and regulation. Since Lemmy abounds in leftists, you will see this usage a lot.

      Finally, to conservatives, liberal is a slur. It’s the OG woke. It means anyone we don’t like. Conservative politicians even call each other liberals, especially during primary season.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        14 hours ago

        I once went to a city council meeting in Utah. The city’s engineer was giving a report on traffic projections if they installed a stoplight in the place of a stop sign. He was very explicit that he was giving estimates of the most traffic that the intersection should see under the proposed change. He was calling them conservative estimates because they were good estimates, and if he (accurately) called them liberal estimates the estimates would be rejected as faulty. Because folk in Utah apparently can’t comprehend a language where ‘liberal’ has a nonpolitical, nonobscene meaning. So the liberal estimates were conservative estimates because fuck you ain’t gonna do a job for it to be rejected (by idiots) for stupid reasons. At least that’s the mood the guy seemed to have I could have been projecting.

      • ivan@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        1 day ago

        I would argue that both liberalism and leftism are spectrums and parts of them overlap, so it’s not like one ≠ other. After all, any participation in democratic process means going reforms and regulations way, even if the endpoint is abolishing capitalism, which would be a logical goal for democratic socialism, for example.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      0·
      1 day ago

      From my understanding a lot of the issue positions that a liberal and a leftist are shared. They want similar changes. Where they disagree is in how to bring about those changes. Liberal wants to use the systems in place to gradually shift, leftists are more radical and wanting quick change through various means. Centrist is what a lot of the Democrats are now, still wanting much of the liberal stance, continuing to not only want to use traditional means to get it, but also caving in often or using the excuse of working across the aisle with their counterparts as why much doesn’t get done. I don’t know if there’s anything between leftist and liberal, maybe progressive?

      It is also a slur, much like boomer and millennial have become, not meaning anything beyond “different than me”.

      • zout@fedia.io
        0·
        1 day ago

        Liberalism is a political philosophy that classically strifes for as much freedom for the invidual as possible without limiting other’s freedoms, separation of church and state, small governments, and free markets without government interference. In theory it can both be left or right in politics, but in my experience they’re globally more right leaning (probably due to the small government and free market ideas, which can ultimately lead to ladder pulling tendencies). It is only called leftism in the US because the conservatives are even more to the right, globally US liberals would be seen as right-wing with some exceptions.

        • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
          0·
          24 hours ago

          Gay marriage is liberal as well because the government isn’t interfering in marriage.

          So are open borders because those are a government restriction.

          Those are pretty big issues in the US.

          Alternatively gun control is authoritarian/anti-Liberal and they scream for that.