• tkw8@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    My racist/sexist/generally terrible uncle calls me liberal, brainwashed and woke, not open minded.

    • Carvex@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Remind him a shepherd doesn’t keep his little sheep around for their nice company, he’s going to sell or eat them.

    • alcoholicorn
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      1 day ago

      Become a communist, then you can call him a liberal.

      • NeilBrü@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Communism is a liberal political and economic philosophy that finds its roots in The Enlightenment.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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          1 day ago

          This is about as valid as saying liberalism is descended from Thomas More’s Utopia because he was an English humanist and thus all liberalism is Utopian thought. Or mercantilist, for that matter.

          Kind of, sure, in the sense that socialism developed after capitalism, and Marxism and anarchism were mostly framed as having to develop from liberal/capitalist nations, but not in the way you mean it, or a useful way at all. For one thing, “liberalism” that doesn’t embrace capitalism is not liberalism ya goof.

          • NeilBrü@lemmy.world
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            15 hours ago

            According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future:

            Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.

            I agree with this definition, above.

            Furthermore, liberalism and its subsequent offspring - socialism (and all its variations), communism, anarchism, etc. - are antitheses to monarchism and divine right.

            What is your definition of liberalism?

            • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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              13 hours ago

              That’s close enough, I just know what “private property” means in this context (that’s the capitalism part btw) and that constitutional monarchies are acceptable to most liberal theorists, as the “absolute” power, aka the ability to make laws, is held by more or less democratic bodies.

              Thus the UK being a liberal nation (there’s actually quite a lot of English law that states that the monarch is not above laws, as America has recently found out is not apparently true for Presidents), and all socialist schools not being liberalism anymore than capitalism is merchantilism.

            • alcoholicorn
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              13 hours ago

              Liberalism is the political philosophy of capitalism.

              Here is a wonderful book going through how various major liberal philosophers addressed the conflict between the liberty of the capitalist class and the liberty of the working class

              Though leftist ideologies evolved from liberalism, they’re not a part of liberalism any more than liberalism is a part of monarchism.

              To pretend otherwise ignores the conflict that arises immediately after every single liberal revolution between the bourgeoisie who depend on the masses to obtain and hold power, but find their interests are opposed as soon as they’re in power, which often results in them no longer being able to mobilize the masses against the forces of reaction.

    • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Hey, my thanksgiving dinner was interrupted by me telling half my family they are not family, so theres always hope