• Reddfugee42@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Liberal just means not conservative. There is no monolithic body called “the liberals” whose beliefs are all alike. It’s a spectrum.

    It’s frankly incredible how often this needs to be stated.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        There’s distinct flavors of liberalism in political science. For example in Classical Liberalism most modern conservatives are included because they want a democratic government.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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          6 months ago

          That’s kind of my point. Saying ‘liberal just means not conservative’ is so vague that it’s effectively meaningless.

          I also think it’s done intentionally to normalize/consolidate voting patterns for a set of people who share very little actual views or policy goals and enforce a political binary. In that way I think it’s worse than meaningless - it’s actively harmful.

      • ObliviousEnlightenment@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        A lot of us speak colloqial, speaking colloquial is more common. You cannot enter a discourse held by laymen, assume and use academic definitions, and expect to be understood or agreed with

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          Much of the English speaking world uses liberal to mean its formal definition, for example, the Liberal Democratic Party in the UK.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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          6 months ago

          Maybe not if the definition is left assumed to be shared, but you’d think the layman may come to a richer understanding of meaning once presented with a precise distinction .