this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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"Liberal" and "libertarian" both derive from liber "free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious." In much of Europe today, "liberal" is associated with free markets, which is associated with conservatism. It can be very confusing, and so I've stopped using the term "liberal" as the general term.
As a technical term, when you're talking among educated people, you can use "liberal," but for a general non-technical sense, I've started using "progressive" to describe myself lately. Another good word is "left" or "left wing", but I think progressive catches the essence of the idea better.
I think unrestricted freedom is sort of a nutty idea, and so the original sense of the root word matches the nutty libertarians better, anyways.
Yeah that's my go to as well.
It takes the power out of their curse.
I'm for progress. Not for staying the same or regressing. Not for unrestricted freedom. But for guaranteed freedoms.
A little off topic, but don't we all just want a society that works for its members? We look at the world and at history to see which types of political parties were able to create situations that worked.
The problem is, for conservatives, only a small fraction of people count as people.
Not ‘round these-here parts. People get really mad at “liberals”. Which I find ridiculous, but then I’m a libcuck Dem apologist genosider. Or so I've been told.
By russian-sponsored trolls you ask? Nnnnno?
Liberalism is a specific ideology, and it's the dominant one in the world today. People around here have very good and often well-articulated reasons for disliking liberalism.
*points to OP*
disliking things like rules-based world order and voting?
What reasons would illiberal ideologies have to be against that? Nationalism? Opportunistic cronyism?
"Rules-based" world order in liberalism tends to end up with some countries breaking the rules and facing no consequences (see the unilateral veto power of the permanent members of the UN security council).
Liberalism also endorses things like private property, which allows an ownership class that extracts value from others without creating it.
I wouldn't call people Russian trolls for having a different definition of the word "liberal" than you. Most online leftists use the term "liberal" to refer to bourgeoisie that support, intentionally or unintentionally, mega-corporations and patriotic nationalism.
So they’re not Americans.
Which is fair enough, but maybe then they could not be all up in every thread about American elections? Because they don’t understand them very well?
I think saying "socially liberal" is probably fine still. Most people will think that means pro-civil-liberties. It's just when you use one term to refer to every political stance when things become an issue. If you're liberal, what in particular are you liberal about? That's when it becomes more useful to break things into smaller pieces. Conservative and liberal are far too broad. Progressive/leftist is more exclusive, and you could go further to say communist, socialist, anarchist, etc. It's pretty much impossible to wrap every aspect of your belief into one word with only about two choices for that word (three if you include the absence of either).