Hello, comrades. I was wondering why we allowed “liberal” to become a dirty word? A “liberal” is someone favorable to progress or reform, and also someone in favor of individual rights and liberties.
I understand American fake liberals largely discredited the word, but in Lemmygrad forums, I see true liberalism every day: people discuss progressive ideas all the time, and are very tolerant of each other. Why do we allow American fake liberals to ruin the experience for us all? The word “liberal” should once again ring positive, while fake liberals should be called “faux liberals” which they are, don’t you agree?
Not even gonna bother with why liberalism is garbage, since others have already done so.
But this idea of “rescuing words”, “we can’t allow them to take (label) from us!” is nonsense, and will always sound as ridiculous as “let’s take back the swastika! We can’t allow the nazis to ruin it!” Symbols are meaningless for the most part.
If you’re talking about a specific party in your country - then I’m aware many places have outlawed communist party of (country), worker’s party of (country). That is a shame, and if a genuinely good party resorts to calling itself a liberal one, we shouldn’t discard them. Yet we don’t have to cry tears for the word liberal. Those parties, either they’d call themselves communists if they could, or they’re misguided.
I think I understand. The word “liberal” appears to have been thoroughly discredited for most Western leftists.
For the past 150 years, yes. Also, see Mao’s “COMBAT LIBERALISM” to see it’s not just a western thing.