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according to @Custoslibera’s post
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this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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Oops, my bad, I forgot liberal means something different in America. I meant it as a synonym for left.
Common misunderstanding is we're playing the same game. The game they're playing is "own the lib-tards". At the moment, we are scoring own-goals and it's fucking embarrassing.
And as aforementioned, it's the own-goals which are causing people to switch sides.
The game the left is playing is "who has the best idea", which doesn't matter to the right, because they're either deliberately taking us out of context, or believing on face value what is being said by those who are consciously misunderstanding.
The only way to win both games is to stop giving them ammo and present our ideas with a modicum of sanity.
Well then you shouldn't use them as synonims because they are fundamentally different ideologies.
Again, why would we care about their game and scoring goals in it or not when we know they can move the goalposts at any time? The whole optics game is rigged in their favour, so don't play. Leftist ideas are sane, they are the ones misrepresenting them as insane, no matter how logical they are. They have massive funding and a giant media machine to push it. Fuck them.
Do what is right. Simple.
Yes, the game is rigged in their favour, absolutely. The problem is that their ideas will not change, they are conservative, they conserve their ideas.
It's the responsibility of the ones who can change, to be smarter about it. If we sink to their level, we are no better than them.
Progressives are smarter, but we're not acting like it. That's why I'm saying we need to be better at policing our own, it's all about mitigating needless stupidity.
Also, outside of America, liberal and leftist are essentially synonymous, so that's why I used it. But it's my fault for not remembering America makes a very different distinction.
European here. They are absolutely not synonymous. Where I grew up liberals are the right wing, with socialists on the left and religious party on the center.
That's the liberal party, same in Australia.
However, when I say liberal I mean it as an ideology, which is very much leftist:
You conveniently cut out the next definition in your page where it says that it is related to liberalism.
And the leftism ideologies isn't simply being open-minded. It is actively promoting new ideas and policies that benefits the citizens. This is why we use the term progressive.
Liberal is firmly center right on the political compass and even the definition you post ad nauseum is indicative of that.
I'm not trying to deceive anyone. As I mentioned a dozen or more times before, Liberal does have a different definition in America.
The definition says "promoting new ideas and policies" when it says "favouring reform".
The definition I'm referring to is inherently progressive. There are no mutually exclusive terms, they are in fact the same thing by this definition.
Liberal (adjective): given, used, or occurring in generous amounts.
Finally, someone who gets it.
I subscribe to the ideology of liberalism, ie. Whatever it is, make sure you give a lot.
I've noticed that it's generally a bad idea to discuss ideologies by label. If I talk about soviet communism, am I talking about what Lenin and Stalin practiced in the USSR, or the ideals from which they started and mixed with pragmatic realist policies, eventually allowing corruption to pervade?
Talking about liberalism or leftism as if it is a unified, monolithic ideology only confuses people. Even specific movements (say the Christian nationalist movement in the United States) there is still some ambiguity. They want the US to be a Christian nation, but don't agree on which denominations would be privileged (say, can serve office), are legal among citizens or are criminal.
When I talk about ideological principles and want to be clear, I talk about specifics. e.g. Everyone should be equal under law. Minors should have the same civil rights that adults do. Street drugs should be decriminalized, and drug epidemics should focus on treatment and mitigation. Force should be a last resort by law enforcement, not used just because a civilian has an unknown object in their hand.
Yeah I learned my lesson for sure. I won't be using the term again, even if the context is correct. It just isn't worth explaining myself a million times.