What are GD Liberals about anyway?
Recently I got to a point with conversations (which I honestly wasn’t even trying to participate in), in reading general posts from people I know, and also in messages specifically to me from people I love and respect, in which I was noticing a consistent vehement tone when people use the noun “liberal(s)”. I started to question if my understanding of liberalism was confused. I mean, I’m a registered Democrat and believe that all people should be free, but if that’s what a Liberal is too, I guess I’m a Liberal as well? I wasn’t sure if these were synonymous or maybe marginally different points on a sliding scale, so I decided to learn more.
I started to look up Liberalism, Conservatism, Democratic ideals and Republican ideals, and also Libertarianism; I do this for pretty much everything even mildly controversial, spending the better part of a day or multiple days in this case, reading, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and doing so using resources both biased on both sides and unbiased (I trust allsides.com for this) as best I can if it’s a political issue; I put extra effort not to get sucked into an echo chamber because I do believe it’s important to see both sides, as I teach my students. For this particular topic, I learned that the usage of the word in political contexts has been evolving for hundreds of years across the globe but the basis is this: individuals are free to do whatever they like as long it doesn't stop others from doing what they like. This definition seems very American in general to me, especially lately, not so much Democratic or Republican, but the most basic principle of American society.
Some other basics I won’t skip over are that in its present state, the Democratic Party subscribes to what can be called a Neoliberal ideology, so pretty left on that sliding scale with Republican ideology seemingly matching what is really classical Liberalism ideology of Conservatism on the other side of the scale. The Neoliberals believe that the Federal government is needed for creating laws and regulations economically and socially whereas the Conservatives believe that when the government intervenes, that is an infringement on their liberties, especially economically. When it comes to social issues, Conservatives tend to believe in upholding seemingly traditional Christian beliefs. Libertarians seem to align more economically with Conservatives but when it comes to personal and social issues, want even less government interference in all matters, emphasizing the rights of the individuals.
Somewhat new information (to me anyway) would be the Progressive ideology, even more left than Liberalism, which seems to expect the government not just to protect the disadvantaged but to address systemic issues with reform — and here I was thinking that progressive ideology had to do with science and technological advances, whoops!
My favorite source for understanding the concepts of Neoliberalism and Conservatism comes from a writer who has written articles titled, “Conservatism Now? Market Economies and the Liberal Anti-Culture” and “Why Liberals Should Be Conservative: Climate Change, Excellence, and the Practice of Happiness”, in other words, not some “liberal propaganda” as I’ve heard said. The writer, Erik Lindberg, says, “[neoliberals] still believe that people should be permitted to do whatever they want up to the point at which it keeps others from doing the same, but they just believe that this ‘point’ appears more frequently: many more of our wishes and desires, if fulfilled, affect others than conservatives are apt to admit. [Neo]liberals believe that in a society one may not be able to do whatever one wants without harming others as consistently as conservatives do.” This makes sense with a lot of the conversations I’ve had recently with regards to COVID19 response and systemic issues.
Lindberg gives the economic example that in terms of the markets ALL Liberals (neo and classical) wish for there to be economic freedom without limits but Political Liberals believe that this then allows for an unfair advantage to those who already have the wealth which can create more oppression and limits to the freedoms of the have-nots, which means that Political Liberals are prone to yes, placing limits on some economic freedoms to protect the underserved. So not takeaway individual’s freedoms, but attempt to even out the playing field.
According to the 2018 U.S. census, About 11 percent of white Americans live below the poverty line as compared to 22.5 percent of Black Americans, but a Classical Liberal/Conservative will say, “that the imbalance of results we see when there is unfettered economic freedom is itself the result of fair competition in which “the best” win, or that trying to regulate and create more fairness ultimately does more harm than good.” So those regulations should help fill the gap a little, right? And the harm-- aside from harm to the wealthy in the form of having LESS wealth, who else does it harm? Legit question that I will research at a later date (though I expect after reading this, I’ll be given some ideas and resources I should check out).
I have recently started watching the show Billions and the main character, Bobby Axelrod, a very successful hedgefund owner, skirts the authorities when it comes to his genius--though not always quite legal--dealings (because of all those liberal regulations). The man has many BILLIONS and often says things to the matter of “but who am I hurting?”. A little background would be that Bobby was an underprivileged child in a one-parent home for the majority of his life who feels he got where he is all by himself. Despite the fact of know what it's like to have nothing, he winds up (spoiler alert) using his connections and power (a result of his wealth, of course) to buy the debt of a town in upstate New York because he wanted to own a casino there but when the licensing doesn’t come through, he decides to ravage the town for every cent it has, letting the inhabitants become victims. He goes forth with this citing that he was able to come up without a handout, so now (I’m only 2 seasons in, so maybe he has a change of heart), these people in this already economically suffering town, will have even less than they already do because they will not be able to budget for education, fire, police, after school and nutrition programs, etc. They will have to prioritize the most basic needs. He has that “bootstraps'' mentality that seems to match Lindberg’s example of the Conservative ideal, like if he could do it without help, everyone can!
Obviously, it’s great to be a self made billionaire, but if it were the norm it wouldn’t be so impressive. According to Forbes, in 2020, there are only 2,095 billionaires in the world (of 7.8 billion people), mostly via inheritance and therefore NOT self-made; 116 billionaires in all of the U.S. and of those 116, according to Business Insider, only 6 of whom are Black. So how can we say that the playing field is even when only 5 percent of the top wealth in the U.S. is Black owned? How can we deny that this reality is a result of disenfranchisement? If we steer away from the “playing field” metaphor and think about a sport like golf where something called a handicap is given to weaker players to make the scoring of the game more competitive-- do the disenfranchised not deserve this courtesy? Not everyone, or even most people, can get there without some help-- and what’s with society’s negative attitude towards help, whether needing it or asking for it, in every sense of the word, anyway?
Equity and equality aren’t the same thing and it seems, in this Liberal’s P.O.V., that our government should protect its most vulnerable people and give them opportunities to achieve the American dream, and the Preamble of the United States Constitution supports this thinking.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
“We the people” are the citizens of the U.S. who elect the governing bodies to represent our interests. Justice means fairness, “promote” means to support progress, welfare is defined as, “the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group” and Posterity means for the future generations.
What about this makes me-- for being a Liberal--the “scum of the earth”/ “child of beelzebub” or most recently, “a domestic terrorist”??? There are a lot of issues and yes, there are opinions all along a spectrum. But that’s what I aim to highlight, that it is a spectrum and being a liberal doesn’t mean I, or every other Liberal, want you to have your guns taken away. Infact, according to the Associated Press, 20 percent of gun owners in the U.S. identify as Liberals, some 12 million people, and that was before sales started to increase in recent months. It also doesn’t mean that all, or even most Liberals support the idea of looting and rioting-- peaceful protests, yes, probably most, BUT NOT ALL. Stop conflating! No one label fits everyone or every situation. You want to debate about a specific Liberal or Republican person or policy/proposal and then the support or lack thereof of said policy, I’m game. But the catchalls slandering either side, are wholly unuseful except for the purpose of division, which I guess is the goal of some.
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