1. Left wing, gender blabla, pronouns, rainbow flag, woke people
  2. Hyper Capitalist, laissez-faire economist
  3. Traditional elite, Washington bureaucrats, old money families that arrogantly look down on common people and have their fingers in all sorts of institutions
  4. Woke but capitalists: freedom in markets, freedom for people. The enlightened centrism niche that incorporates societal democrats and economic republicans
141.7%
24.2%
34.2%
429.2%
other (please comment below!)20.8%
24 votes \ poll ended
It has been co-opted by authoritarians, but it used to be liberal as in liberty. They call us "Classical liberals" now or Libertarians.
reply
Yes and no. The motto of Reddit r/neoliberal is still
Free trade, open borders, taco trucks on every corner.
Free trade = capitalist. Open borders & taco trucks = woke.
Specifically in the US the liberterians are just edgy republicans. Specifically in Europe liberterians are also more anarchist while liberals are more middle-of-the-road and ready to make compromises.
reply
It's all a words game. Don't let them fool you with tricks and labels. this is all they want: you, to have a label. JUST BE A MAN. A sovereign man that is doing his own business.
fuck the rest, fuck'em'all
reply
61 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 17 Sep 2022
This I can agree with. I liked your "state is an illusion" argument in another comment even though (or exactly because?) it sounds ridiculous
But bitcoin sounds ridiculous to a lot of people first, too
reply
But bitcoin sounds ridiculous to a lot of people first, too
Because like many other things (mostly coming from their beloved government), they suffer from ....
reply
A liberal interpretation of the US Constitution.
reply
Somewhere between 3 & 4
reply
Left wing is liberal? Maybe regarding drugs but the rest?
reply
Have you ever heard "owning the libs" while refering to left wingers? It's really common.
reply
Mhh, I see, yes. But only related to US politics
reply
Other. It never meant anything. For instance, so-called Classical Liberals held a huge range of incompatible beliefs:
  • JS Mill wanted the State to "liberate" individuals from the "restrictions" of society/religion/etc
  • Garibaldi was a veritable authoritarian
  • Hayek was a democratic socialist who favored the social/welfare programs we have in every nation-state today
  • John Locke formalized social contract theory, which helped to expand the power of the State to new levels
  • Mises and Bastiat were both minarchists
Just like Classical Liberalism, modern Liberalism means nothing, because it is applied to people with radically different beliefs.
reply
Liberals mostly value the "individual liberties" that most western liberal democracies provide. It is as simple as that, anything that can put the liberties of an individual at risk, even for a greater "good", is a major red flag.
Of course that nothing in this world is binary or black&white, so for society to work certain compromises/tradeoffs are required, so each liberal will have his own threshold on any given topic.
Of course things are viewed differently depending on the country, in some countries liberals are placed on the right on other countries they are viewed as left, but it mostly depends on the existing political parties and scene on that specific country.
But evaluating a messy and complex "world" using a single dimension model (left vs right) is dumb anyway.
reply
The word has been hijacked
I thought it simply mean freedom
reply
Afaik liberals were the founding fathers of the west, but lately it has lost its meaning
reply