Semantics

[Angst]

This forum is pretty overwhelmingly liberal

This forum is pretty overwhelmingly social liberal.

edit: not personal towards gw16, it just pops up every once in a while and is a huge pet peeve of mine

 

[Ailedhoo]

We need a survey... although then we need to get EVERYONE to join in.

It might be a comment on the forum of the Civilization series by such observations but... it will be difficult to narrow down. There area lot of ideological views there, both in the realms of the ecomonic right and left along with the centre, along with the authoriterian-anarchist scale. Consideration must be observed to the difficulty of labelling.

 

[Angst]

Nono, I don't think you got me; he means well and what he thinks is right. The problem is how he says it. The forum is overwhelmingly social liberal. Not liberal. Liberalism is an economically right-wing political idealism, not a left-wing one as some Americans tend to think.

 

[bhsup]

Nono, I don't think you got me; he means well and what he thinks is right. The problem is how he says it. The forum is overwhelmingly social liberal. Not liberal. Liberalism is an economically right-wing political idealism, not a left-wing one as some Americans tend to think.

We have our definition, you have yours. It's as simple as that, so maybe you should just accept that when you hear an American say "liberal", they most likely just mean what you would call a "social liberal" and let it slide.

Do you deny that word meanings change over time? Gay used to simply mean happy, now it means homosexual. Rubbers used to refer to winter boots, now they refer to condoms.

 

[Angst]

Of course I should let it slide. I said it was a pet peeve. I still want to let you know where and why you were wrong. A common misconception, so to say.

Gay still means happy.

The American bastardization of the word is a political reference, not a idealist definition. It refers to the contemporary policies of the Democratic Party, not to Locke or Smith.

When the Danish governing party of Social Democrats, who have been a "worker's party" which used to support pro-Sovjet propaganda and a politically red manifesto, suggested that there should be tax cuts this election, did that then make lowering taxes a part of democratic socialism?

 

[Borachio]

Ahem. Gay morphed again:

keep up!

 

[JollyRoger]

We have our definition, you have yours. It's as simple as that, so maybe you should just accept that when you hear an American say "liberal", they most likely just mean what you would call a "social liberal" and let it slide.

Do you deny that word meanings change over time? Gay used to simply mean happy, now it means homosexual. Rubbers used to refer to winter boots, now they refer to condoms.

Do your winter boots make you happy?

 

[GenMarshall]

The Homosexual Nineties? The 1890s won't be the same (Shakes fist at the march of time changing definitions). Thanks to that, I'm now calling the 1890s, the Happy Nineties .

 

[History_Buff]

And here I thought your complaint was with his use of "pretty overwhelmingly".

 

[warpus]

If two groups of people can't agree on a common meaning for a term, then they simply will be unable to communicate and exchange ideas. This is why squirrels and humans have not been able to communicate for years.

 

[Borachio]

Nuts!

 

[Winner]

Well, this is a quite well-known difference in meaning between American 'English' and Euro-English.

It gets funnier on person-to-person basis, when the guy you're communicating with has a slightly different (incomplete, too general, too narrow, or simply wrong) idea of what a word means.

If two groups of people can't agree on a common meaning for a term, then they simply will be unable to communicate and exchange ideas. This is why squirrels and humans have not been able to communicate for years.

I thought it was because squirrels are not people and don't have a language. Silly me.

 

[Borachio]

It gets funnier on person-to-person basis, when the guy you're communicating with has a slightly different (incomplete, too general, too narrow, or simply wrong) idea of what a word means.

So then communication, to a large extent, is simply negotiation about semantics?

 

[Leoreth]

I don't think it's right to characterize it as "Euro-English" and "American-English" liberalism. Instead, there's liberalism as a political philosophy which means the same in all parts of the world, and liberalism as a political label. And unsurprisingly, political labels are used in context of their political environment, and are generally deprived of their original meaning anyway. I think liberalism as a philosophy is too broad to be associated with any left/right camp, and in that regard the European association of the term with right-wing economic liberalism is just as "wrong" (or incomplete) as the American association with left-wing social liberalism.

I don't have a problem with the use of this term as a political label - if you know where the person you're talking to is from there's no misunderstanding. Especially in the context where GW used it here specifically; I think opposition to the death penalty is fairly liberal in any interpretation of the term.

 

[Winner]

So then communication, to a large extent, is simply negotiation about semantics?

A nice way to put it To some extent, yes. Of course we all assume that the other person has at least some idea what the words they're using mean, especially the 'basic' words. If I am in disagreement with someone about what the word "apple" means, then we have a serious communication problem Usually this tends to happen when people are using words denoting abstract concepts which are not clearly defined, hence why we argue on this forum endlessly about liberalism, democracy, religion, environmentalism, Central Europe, etc. etc. etc. Also, some of these words have a clear meaning in scholarly language, but slightly different meaning in common usage. That always causes a lot of confusion.

I don't think it's right to characterize it as "Euro-English" and "American-English" liberalism.

I am not doing that. I am simply pointing out that the word "liberal" has shifted in meaning in American English and acquired connotations it doesn't have in Europe. Language reflects the values and cultural quirks of the society it serves.

Instead, there's liberalism as a political philosophy which means the same in all parts of the world, and liberalism as a political label. And unsurprisingly, political labels are used in context of their political environment, and are generally deprived of their original meaning anyway. I think liberalism as a philosophy is too broad to be associated with any left/right camp, and in that regard the European association of the term with right-wing economic liberalism is just as "wrong" (or incomplete) as the American association with left-wing social liberalism.

Yes, pretty much.

 

[Borachio]

To me liberalism just means a kind of laissez-fairism. Not intervening in other people's business if you like. So it would seem impossible for me to be passionate about it.

Yet, because I am passionately anti death penalty, it seems to follow that I'm liberal.

Somehow I'm not comfortable with this characterization.

 

[Leoreth]

I am not doing that. I am simply pointing out that the word "liberal" has shifted in meaning in American English and acquired connotations it doesn't have in Europe. Language reflects the values and cultural quirks of the society it serves.

Yeah, sorry, I was replying more to VRWCAgent's "we have our definition, you have yours" lines, because it implied that every use of the word liberalism is subjective. I only picked up your terms along the way

 

[Flying Pig]

Can I really rock the boat and say that 'liberal' in itself simply means one who place a high value on liberty, and that anything more requires qualification - as such, the vast majority of the forum is in fact liberal. It's certainly not the opposite of 'conservative' (which is in fact 'progressive', but conservatives tend to avoid being seen as 'anti-progressive' for obvious reasons)

 

[Angst]

Liberalism is pretty hard with personal responsibility actually. The hard-working utilitarian as a moral and economical ideal and all. Laissez-faire has a quite hard ethics, and it is also sound in punishment because there is so much moral weight on an individual. Therefore I wouldn't see the death penalty as being necessarily nonliberal.

 

[Borachio]

This depends on where you start measuring, doesn't it?

Simply to illustrate this (cack-handedly):

If you hold the (absurdly extremely) liberal view that it's ok to kill people as an individual, you wouldn't hold with the death penalty.

On the other hand, you could be a liberal and support the death penalty, since you hold it offends your sense of liberty for individuals to go around being killed.