• Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    At this point, I honestly don’t know what “liberal” actually means. I don’t even know how to ask/find out. When I was growing up, I always thought it was good.

    Now I don’t even know what “good” is, other than not being racist or anti-LGBTQ+.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      I would counter relative to the other answer you got that liberalism is based on a leveling of the political rights of citizens while resisting a leveling of economic rights (despite some calls for it even at the time). Feudal governments absolutely were also based on the defense of the rights of their citizens and indeed even some classical slave societies, but the difference is that those societies had [more pronounced and varied] castes which each had different political rights.

      Liberalism was a revolution led by merchants and other propertied people against the aristocracy, i.e. people with the greatest economic rights opposing those with the greatest political rights, leaving the former completely unchecked except sometimes by popular power.

      Incidentally, and this explains some of the bickering in this thread, communists of all stripes are people who advocate that both political and economic rights are leveled, which manifests as the economy being controlled by popular mandate rather than private ownership.

      Anyway, I’m mainly commenting to say if you have other political questions, you can usually get very thorough answers from c/askchapo

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        Hmm, interesting! I should probably actually check out the Chapo podcast. I have never heard it and folks here seem to be fond of it. I have heard some of the hosts on Cumtown, and they’re very funny.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          A lot of people on hexbear hate chapo (despite that being where c/askchapo is, due to hexbear formerly being chapo.chat) but I think it’s alright. The most recent episode starts out with a very informative segment about sanctions.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Draw an equal triangle. One line is ‘public policy’, another ‘private interest’, and the last ‘state authority’. You can label the two endpoints of ‘state authority’ as ‘left’ and ‘right’. The third point is ‘liberal’ which lies in opposition to the political spectrum of state authority. Liberals tend to fixate on authoritarianism over whether it serves the public or private interest.

      People rarely fall on the points or lines as all concepts are in perfect tension.

        • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          You’re fine. Ability to pull political abstracts off Lemmy is not a sign of intelligence or lack thereof.

          But anyway, unless you go full primitive anarchist most people generally want some level of authority: like laws, codes, contracts, etc.

          Whether those things serve public policy vs private interests will generally split ‘left’ or ‘right’ respectively.