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| Source:Slide Share- nails it when it comes to liberalism. |
"President Obama is said to have made the case for a liberal public policy agenda in his State of the Union speech the other night. But what is liberalism?
The conventional view is that liberalism is an ideology. In fact it is a sociology."
The fact is the stereotypes that make Liberals look like dovish socialist-statists or something. Which fits well with Socialist today and back in the day, at least Social Democrats. And then there are Socialists (Social Democrats, if you prefer) like let's use Michael Moore (to use as an example) where these stereotypes that tend to get thrown at Liberals, fit Socialists like him very well.
And the other reason being that socialism like conservatism or libertarianism, is a very diverse political ideology, where you have Socialists who look are Marxist-Socialists, who are Marxists basically. And then you have Social Democrats/Democratic Socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders, who is a Democratic Socialist, but also believes in a certain level of private enterprise and capitalism mixed in with a very large welfare state. Similar to Henry Wallace or George McGovern.
What's called "modern-Liberalism" or what I prefer to call the New-Left in America emerged in the 1960s, as a reaction to the Great Society and Vietnam War of baby boomers who came to age of that decade. And formed organizations like Students for a Democratic Society and other lets say New-Left groups of people who backed the FDR and LBJ social insurance policies, but had their own policies when it came to national security, foreign policy, and law enforcement.
To get to actual liberalism which is the political philosophy I believe in: Liberals simply believe in liberal democracy and that liberal democracy should be there for all Americans, not just some of us. Where we all have the constitutional right to live our own lives and chart our own course in life. As long as we aren't hurting innocent people with how we are living.
What's called "modern-Liberalism" or what I prefer to call the New-Left in America emerged in the 1960s, as a reaction to the Great Society and Vietnam War of baby boomers who came to age of that decade. And formed organizations like Students for a Democratic Society and other lets say New-Left groups of people who backed the FDR and LBJ social insurance policies, but had their own policies when it came to national security, foreign policy, and law enforcement.
To get to actual liberalism which is the political philosophy I believe in: Liberals simply believe in liberal democracy and that liberal democracy should be there for all Americans, not just some of us. Where we all have the constitutional right to live our own lives and chart our own course in life. As long as we aren't hurting innocent people with how we are living.
And that government's role is to see that there's an environment there where equality of opportunity (not result, which is different) for all Americans to be successful life. But then it's up to us as individuals to make the best of the opportunities. That we have with no guarantees.
Liberalism is not libertarianism or even classical liberalism, because neither people who are Liberals (or Classical Liberals, is you prefer) are antigovernment. We just don't like big government. And it's hard anything that so-called Libertarians today believe that government should be doing.
And Liberals are obviously not Socialists either, because our philosophy is not built around some superstate government that's supposed to be big enough to manage everyone's economic and personal affairs for them. We believe in a limited, responsible, and financially sound government. But not big government or no government.
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