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We Need a New Name for Liberals — Jon Gabriel
Earlier this week, liberals forced out the CEO of tech company Mozilla for privately holding common but unfashionable political views. Liberals continue to hound the owners of Hobby Lobby for defending their religious liberty, and also harass the libertarian Koch Brothers for supporting liberty-friendly causes.
Every week it becomes more obvious that liberals are not liberal in any way shape or form.
The word “liberal” comes from liberalis, the Latin word for “freedom.” Politically speaking, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “liberal” as “favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform.”
Understandably, the Founding Fathers were called liberals since they reformed the status quo to vastly increase personal liberty politically, economically, and religiously. Today’s “liberals” are the fiercest defenders of the status quo, desperately clinging to outdated economic theories, educational policy and governing models.
This gives lie to their attempted rebranding as “progressives.” The original progressives were passionate reformers, pushing novel, idealistic solutions to society’s most vexing problems. Progress was the aim of TR, Wilson and FDR, if rarely the result. But today’s so-called progs are mostly reactionaries who insist no one alter the flawed models introduced generations ago.
Obviously neither “liberal” nor “progressive” properly defines the modern left, but what should they be called? We don’t need another insulting epithet, but something that accurately describes their political outlook. Best of all would be descriptive term they themselves would embrace.
I’ve employed “illiberals,” but it’s a bit clunky. “Socialists” and “collectivists” are accurate, but carry some nasty Cold War baggage. “Statists?” “Leftists?” “Jacobins?”
Help me out here, Ricochetti — what should we call American liberals?
Published in General
Brian,
Really great question. Hayek and Friedman are exceptions to my general rule. Both men were avowed agnostics. However, rather that the usual agnostic who uses it as an opportunity to underrate most of the fundemental values of Western Civilization, Hayek and Friedman affirmed the values of Western Civilization. They both thought that the values created by Faith were critical for the healthy functioning of the Market. I personally have always felt that this is really a way of backing into faith. Of course, both men would have denied it but probably with a sly smile on their face.
Regards,
Jim
How about “minority fascists”?
i.e. totalitarians who will always side with the minority, regardless of the merits of the case.
Let’s call them clubs then. Like, if you aren’t a member of their club, you’re out of the game.
Douchebags.
What do they call themselves? Alinsky titled his book “rules for radicals”.
So, what are synonyms for “radical” that they wouldn’t appreciate?
How about “dogmatist”?
Liberals is good. I agree that it’s taken on a new meaning from days of old. I personally use Lefties. Leftist seems a little too serious to me.
Thanks, Jim. My guess is there may be great deal more exceptions but just don’t have the celebrity status of the aforementioned gentlemen. Cheers.
I long ago gave up on the word “progressive” in favor of “transgressive.” Let us count the ways!
No.
For all their faults, The Borg did truly believe in strength through diversity. The Borg seeks the best in every species it assimilates, and incorporates that into its collective.
The Left does not do that. The Left believes it already knows what is “best”, and seeks to destroy everything that diverts from that one true path.If we’re sticking with Star Trek metaphors, the Left is much more like The Dominion in that way.
(Also, at least The Borg was honest and up-front about its intentions. The Dominion, on the other hand, used lies, subterfuge, espionage, and fifth columns within the Alpha Quadrant to achieve its destructive and totalitarian ends.)
Brian,
There will always be exceptions to all purpose rules. However, what I am really referring to in my maxim is the influential intellectual super-elite. From Russell to Sarte to Freud to Jung twentieth century agnosticism plays a strange role. It seems to counter the hard materialist atheist positions of Marxism and Fascism but it usually symultaneously undermines the values that support the free market democratic rights oriented society.
When the only thing anyone hears is a debate between a formalist nihilist and a materialist dogmatist expect big trouble. Taking values for granted is the disaster. Neither Hayek nor Friedman did so. I might be especially sensitive to this but more and more of today’s debate in the general media sounds this way. That we must be so vigilant about protecting Religious Rights in the current atmosphere is a symptom of this phenomena.
Regards,
Jim
They Who Must Be Obeyed (with apologies to Rumpole). “They” are our betters, after all.
I guess it’s outside the spirit of Ricochet to just call them idiots.
Bantha Poodoo. Maybe just Progs.
Speculative retroactivists.
Speculative because their views seem to be based on conjecture and retroactivists because their speculations are driven by outmoded ideas from the past.
Ideational solipsists.
Only your own ideas matter (or even exist).
One last one, partly in jest:
Chachamim ba’layla
Not the easiest one to pronounce, I must admit. The plural of “chacham ba’layla”, literally “wise at night”, therefore ignorant during the day.
I always use Leftist. It’s accurate and the leftists thesevlves don’t seem to mind it. (I think it gives them dreams of rioting in the streets, destroying property and setting fires. The beauty is that it gives normal Americans the same image.)
The facist left
The Enemy will suffice. Because they are.
If we’re going with movie monikers, I like The Empire — especially because they’d hate it, being anti-empiralists and all.
“Loyalists” in the American Revolution historical sense. Royalists, American Tories works here too. They’re clamoring for a king, as long as he’s a Democrat. Or we could go with counter-Revolutionaries, because it’s accurate.
However, to get them to buy in I think the best bets are “Collectivists” or “Social Democrats.” I like the former because it doesn’t impute ill intent to them, as they constantly do to conservatives/Republicans. Once they accept the label, we just have to explain why collectivism doesn’t work, unless it’s voluntary (which their version never is).
I like “Social Democrats” because they’re very much aligned with the European Social Democrats — or the socialists/statists. America separated from that model and many Americans rationally still wish to distinguish themselves from it.
I like “transgressives” too, but I don’t think they’ll go for it. :-(
Let’s just call them “stinkburgers.”
We should call them what they really are: national socialists. We could shorten it to Nazis, as they did in Germany almost a century ago.
Modern liberals are an odd grab bag of ideologies. They’ve certainly been influenced by socialism (in their sentiments) and fascism (in their use of propaganda, corporatism, and veneration of the state).
Liberalism has the properties of a religion that divides the world into good (non-white, female, gay, non-Christian) and evil (white, male, heterosexual, and Christian) and views aberrant sexual expression as one of the truest sacraments.
So I’d work on a label that identified liberalism as a harsh judgmental religion that focuses on sex, victomology and assauging white/wealthy/male/heterosexual guilt.
Maybe adding scare quotes to “Liberals” and “Progressives”? It’s only effective in writing. However, I increasingly just call them Socialists, Fascists, Leftists and Totalitarians. The names may have baggage, but they derserve to carry it. They’ve earned the sting.
I’ve always called them plain ol’ “Leftists.” “Fascists” works for me, too. Last year someone (a stupid someone) told me that liberals could not be fascists. That fascism was automatically right-wing. I laughed and laughed and was amused greatly.
I like “leftists.” But “statists” is good, too, because it seems like you’re being reasonable when you call them that. They just happen to look to the state for solutions to every problem. We’re the opposite. We’re “individualists” or “family-ists” or something like that.
We’re better, in other words.
I use Libprogs because it makes ’em sounds like amphibians. Not unlike reptiles ie, snakes.
I have always liked the term Statist because it captures what I see as the main difference between conservatives and liberal/progressives. However, the latest witch hunt at Mozilla makes me think it has gone beyond just using government to suppressing all other political thought, that is why totalitarian is probably more accurate.
“Fascist” is problematic because nationalism was an essential part of fascism. Today’s leftists are often more than a little ambivalent towards the USA. They are statists but they aren’t nationalists.
As for Wilson’s committment to “progress” and “reform”, that’s a dubious clam. He was a thoroughgoing reactionary on the subject of race.
“Progressive fascists”