Becoming a liberal

[JP226]

I don't know what it is about hot hippie chicks and the laid back life style, but i'm without a doubt attracted to being a liberal. The problem is, I think. That's not meant to be an insult or anything like that, I can't seem to fundamentally come to terms with things like redistribution, the minimum wage, universal healthcare or just in general mass distribution of scarce goods. Most of my friends tend to be liberals, but unfortuantely the closest i've come is being a libertarian. I get the whole, "leave me alone in the bed room" argument. Being mathematically oriented I throw too much logic into the equation, arguments about morality and how the world should be versus how it is never carried weight. While I can sit by and agree that we should in essense be left alone, when arguments turn towards health care, the numbers don't work. Nor does the logic.

So why i'm making this thread is a sort of search for answers. Not answers as to why or not universal healthcare is correct, but rather why being a liberal is a good thing. And while i'm not willing to hear the arguments about how healthcare or public education might work one day, help me break through on the morality factor. I look at things in terms of costs and benefits, and while costs are pretty much plain for everyone to see, idealism can certainly be a benefit. Help me see it that way. I want to be a liberal, atleast I think.

[Da Skinna]

As long as we don't mistake liberal/conservative for idealist/realist.

History needed liberals for us, all of us, whether we know it or not, like it or not, to have this kind of freedom that we have.

And we need conservatives to understand those values, the value of freedom, for them to best maintain it.

Everybody has a place. Yay God.

[Helm]

"leave me alone in the bed room" Isn't particularly liberal, that's conservative if anything.

[cfmonkey45]

"leave me alone in the bed room" Isn't particularly liberal, that's conservative if anything.

Depends on your conservative. Most are "we'll leave the non-sinners alone..."

[JP226]

As long as we don't mistake liberal/conservative for idealist/realist.

Of course, i'm just using modern definitions. A liberal can be a realist, but in today's times they seem to be more idealistic.

[Evariste]

"leave me alone in the bed room" Isn't particularly liberal, that's conservative if anything.

In America that's a liberal thing. Social conservatives love regulating the bedroom.

Of course, i'm just using modern definitions. A liberal can be a realist, but in today's times they seem to be more idealistic.

You would call liberals more idealistic, especially in today's economic climate?

Also, you seem to becoming more libertarian than anything else, but you probably already knew that.

[Viking Prince]

Originally Posted by Helm
"leave me alone in the bed room" Isn't particularly liberal, that's conservative if anything.

In America that's a liberal thing. Social conservatives love regulating the bedroom.

They both run their laws into the bedroom. It just depends on whether you agree or disagree.

Who wants to have sex ed in the schools, distribute condoms, force people to recognize gay marriage, etc. I am not saying this is all bad to do, but both sides want in the bedroom. If not my bedroom, the bedrooms of children.

One problem with the modern liberal is that they want me to acknowledge approval for what goes on in other people's bedrooms. I do not want to know and I do not care.

I am a private guy with a private life. I want to keep it that way.

[Da Skinna]

As well, the distinction should be made between what a liberal or a conservative values, and to what their modern incarnations hold as proper policy.

Policy can be adjusted, they are never perfect. They are not values, they reflect values, implement them.

[Ragabash]

You might want to get your hands on below book, as it's about social liberatism; in essence liberal values within social socities, and how society can still be moral and take care of the weak, without suppressing most liberal values.

[Helm]

Libertarianism is focused on the liberty of the individual while liberalism is focused more on the freedom of society in general. They're both concerned with freedom but ones ultra right wing and the other is ultra left wing.

[Bovril]

If you are really interested the philosophy and theory of liberalism is well develloped. A few names to start with might include Anthony Giddens (sociologist), Richard Rorty (philosopher), Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz (economists). Then you might be interested in the classics of the 'Liberal' tradition, including people like John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, John Dewey, Alexis De Touquville, Henry Thoreau etc., etc.
It's also worth noting that Liberalism has always been ehavily influenced by socialism and/or working class/labour movements, which have provided something approaching a conscience for it throughout the ages.

On the other hand, if you are looking for idealism, try somewhere else. There is very little idealism in the sort of US Liberalism you are talking about. Anyone who thinks either Clinton, Kenedy, Obama, or any of the other post war (or, probably, pre war) Democrats had/has much idealism in them is sadly mistaken.

[SigniferOne]

Really this is me looking for the easy way out, the way that will be more accepted. I have a bad habit about thinking people are stupid. And let's not kid ourselves, this forum may be an exception, but most people are dumb, Not because they are mentally challeneged but they have other worries and the default befief these days is closer to the left than right.

Who said the default belief is closer to the left? Only if you're living in a deeply-left area. The majority of the US is center-right.

I want to be a liberal essentially because everyone else is one, but damnit if it's not hard to come to an underatnading of how such theory may be right. If you give me a window i'll jump through it, but no one has been able to provide one.

That is at once an admirable and an awful statement, on many levels. I hope you jump through the window that leads to the guidings of your conscience, nothing else. If you're jumping through the window to land in bed with a hippie chick, that's selling your soul to the devil in the worst way...

Then you might be interested in the classics of the 'Liberal' tradition, including people like John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, John Dewey, Alexis De Touquville, Henry Thoreau etc., etc.

That's funny, men like Thomas Paine and Voltaire would have nothing to do with the modern liberals, who today have perverted the liberal tradition, and have no claim to the 'classics'. In fact it is the conservatives who are deeply reverential of the classical liberal tradition. Name me the last time Daily Kos quoted something from Voltaire or the Founding Fathers.

So please, don't claim things that aren't appropriate. For you, Karl Marx and Keynes are your new 'liberal tradition', so you're best to stick with that.

[Bovril]

That's funny, men like Thomas Paine and Voltaire would have nothing to do with the modern liberals, who today have perverted the liberal tradition, and have no claim to the 'classics'. In fact it is the conservatives who are deeply reverential of the classical liberal tradition. Name me the last time Daily Kos quoted something from Voltaire or the Founding Fathers.

So please, don't claim things that aren't appropriate. For you, Karl Marx and Keynes are your new 'liberal tradition', so you're best to stick with that.

Are you joking? Thomas Paine was one of the earliest intellectuals to propose a welfare state (an idea he took from the demands of working class movements of the time). He advocated progressive taxation, social security, taking religion out of politics, etc. etc. He even advocated international revolutionary solidarity and the overthrow of traditional government, which rather exceeds normal 'Liberal' approaches. He was far more 'Liberal' than most modern 'Liberals'. Go read his actual writing, you might learn some fun things.
As for Voltaire, much the same could be said. He was one of the earliest advocated of positive freedoms, despised traditionalism and advocated progressive tax reform and the destruction of the old social and political order.
Really, you couldn't have picked two worse examples of people to argue aren't direct antecedents of the modern liberal tradition except if you had argued that they were too radical for modern liberalism.

Finally, how the hell can you conflate Marx and Keynes? Do you know anything about them? Marx was a stalwart critic of liberalism. His social goals and techniques were anethema to liberalism. I'm going to again advise you to get to grips with the source materials.

Since I'm no liberal, don't think that these claims are the result of personal wishful thinking. They're the result of actually looking the the continuities of intellectual tradition, and not picking and choosing bits you're willing to accept from earlier progressives, whilst ignoring the nature of their social projects, who they assosiated with, and the kinds of change they made.

[SigniferOne]

Are you joking? Thomas Paine was one of the earliest intellectuals to propose a welfare state (an idea he took from the demands of working class movements of the time). He advocated progressive taxation, social security, taking religion out of politics, etc. etc. He even advocated international revolutionary solidarity and the overthrow of traditional government, which rather exceeds normal 'Liberal' approaches. He was far more 'Liberal' than most modern 'Liberals'. Go read his actual writing, you might learn some fun things.

I have, thanks. In Common Sense he is an unadulterated champion of self-government, not the obese nanny-state. In Rights of Man he is rather radical, but not a welfare-statist that you try to attribute to him. The only thing that he has in common with modern welfare champions is that he was an atheist, a rather small bridge over which to build a friendship with somebody.

Finally, how the hell can you conflate Marx and Keynes? Do you know anything about them? Marx was a stalwart critic of liberalism. His social goals and techniques were anethema to liberalism.

Marx was a critic of classical liberalism. By Keynes time, that has ceased to exist, aside from a few classical economists who were quickly becoming extinct. That's why I can, and do, conflate Keynes and Marx -- both were champions of modern liberalism, which has nothing to do with the classical one. Thomas Paine would turn in his grave if the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the champions of nationalization, used his name. To him self-government was a sacred value, the government was a necessary evil, and government officials an eternal enemy. Tell me if Barack Obama or the Daily Kos believe that. Stop dreaming.

[Last Roman]

Marx was a critic of classical liberalism. By Keynes time, that has ceased to exist, aside from a few classical economists who were quickly becoming extinct. That's why I can, and do, conflate Keynes and Marx -- both were champions of modern liberalism, which has nothing to do with the classical one. Thomas Paine would turn in his grave if the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the champions of nationalization, used his name. To him self-government was a sacred value, the government was a necessary evil, and government officials an eternal enemy. Tell me if Barack Obama or the Daily Kos believe that. Stop dreaming.

so wrong. Marx clearly wanted the state to not just intervene, but CONTROL the market, while Keynes argued for gov't intervention, not total control. Also, modern liberalism espouses the idea of social liberalism, not something I'm sure Marx would've been too keen on.

[JP226]

Really this is me looking for the easy way out, the way that will be more accepted. I have a bad habit about thinking people are stupid. And let's not kid ourselves, this forum may be an exception, but most people are dumb, Not because they are mentally challeneged but they have other worries and the default befief these days is closer to the left than right.

I want to be a liberal essentially because everyone else is one, but damnit if it's not hard to come to an underatnading of how such theory may be right. If you give me a window i'll jump through it, but no one has been able to provide one.

[jsktrogdor]

I want to be a liberal essentially because everyone else is one, but damnit if it's not hard to come to an underatnading of how such theory may be right.

Right....

[Profler]

If you are really interested the philosophy and theory of liberalism is well develloped. A few names to start with might include Anthony Giddens (sociologist), Richard Rorty (philosopher), Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz (economists). Then you might be interested in the classics of the 'Liberal' tradition, including people like John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, John Dewey, Alexis De Touquville, Henry Thoreau etc., etc.
It's also worth noting that Liberalism has always been ehavily influenced by socialism and/or working class/labour movements, which have provided something approaching a conscience for it throughout the ages.

Amen Bovril, though I feel that perhaps Lloyd George deserves a look in, if only for articulating the first effective union between classical and social liberalism as only a welshman could:

Let us build up the temple of liberalism in this country, so long as we remember that the worshippers must eat.
(slightly paraphrased I fear)

I can appreciate the ambivalence you're experiencing JP (hell, I have to try and deal with the same every time I open my mouth in an argument ). Basically speaking, there is a wealth of liberal philosophy out there, often with contradictory implications or interpretations. If you try and explain that at a basic level Adam Smith and William Beveridge (the intellectual father of universal healthcare in the capitalist world) were both liberals that would probably have agreed on the vast majority of their beliefs, people perhaps understandably can go a bit cross-eyed.

My take on it (and I confess that this is basically a précis of the preamble to the Orange Book) is basically as follows:

Liberalism in its modern sense can be broken down into four distinct tenets, which individual 'Liberals' will judge to be of varying importance or weight according to their own opinions and beliefs:

1)Personal Liberalism

Probably the most ancient form of liberalism and the original root of all the others, personal liberty asserts an individuals right to self-expression and to lead their life without interference from others. (A very broad brush, but much finer thinkers and more elegant writers than I have put these ideas on paper, so I won't attempt any more without a wealth of literature on hand and a couple of months reading time!)

2)Political Liberalism

A natural extension of personal liberty, political liberty strives for an open and accessible system of governance that can protect, but not impede on an individual's personal liberty.

3)Economic Liberalism

Further asserting the principles of personal and political liberalism into the economic arena, establishing the principles of free trade and free markets.

4)Social Liberalism

The late comer to the party. Although it can trace its roots back a long way, didn't really start to win out against the 'classical' triumverate until the turn of the 20th century. This is probably the most articulate liberal espousal of the principles of positive liberty, freedom from as opposed to freedom to.

I admit that the above is shaky at best (my philosophy has been rather neglected for the last two years or so) and I certainly invite correction if anyone can provide a better summary, but to my simple engineer's mind's eye, liberalism in any form consists of striving for the personal optimum of the above four tenets. Some (most 'classical' liberals for example) may choose to focus on the first three at the expense of the latter, while equally social liberals may do the reverse (perhaps even straying as far as the social democrats!). However, my personal belief is that there is nothing inherently contradictory in holding all four of these principles in equal balance, even if it does induce a touch of political schizophrenia from time to time...

[Scar Face]

Really this is me looking for the easy way out, the way that will be more accepted. I have a bad habit about thinking people are stupid. And let's not kid ourselves, this forum may be an exception, but most people are dumb, Not because they are mentally challeneged but they have other worries and the default befief these days is closer to the left than right.

I want to be a liberal essentially because everyone else is one, but damnit if it's not hard to come to an underatnading of how such theory may be right. If you give me a window i'll jump through it, but no one has been able to provide one.

Why the hell do you want to be anything politically? You are what you are. You are obviously well read, you obviously know economic and social arguments of both prevailing ideologies in America. You know which one you support the most, stop being foolish. You are a liberal or you aren't, a thread to convince you is ridiculous.

Edit: Or are you making fun of liberals in this thread and their motivations behind it? Yeah probably. Stupid me.

[Osceola]

Just be a libertarian like me.

Were like hippie liberals except were not douchebags.

Also, we get the liberal sluts too, they love us. They think of us as like them just + guns.

Life as a Libertarian is pretty sweet. Pro everything, pretty much.