Thanks for this piece here, Helen, I again appreciate the clarity of your thinking.
A challenge that I see comes with the assertion that core "given" of the Liberalism we want to keep in mind is the concept of individual liberty. This is certainly true and helpful in many ways, but still sets up an easy ability to mistakenly see the word "individual" there more as an adjective and "liberty" as the noun. Which then leads to all kinds of unhelpful debates and arguments over what we mean by "liberty," as well as most of the regressive thinking around diversity, equity, and inclusion where the actual individual human is often entirely negated.
In my opinion, viewing the "individual" as the noun, claiming the related characteristics of self-sovereignty and inalienable dignity as givens, then allows liberty to be seen as one of many natural consequence of this framing. This centrality of the individual also supports all the other terms and concepts in your word cloud, such as equality before the law, free speech, consent of the governed, etc...
It also directly implies Democratic participation (everybody gets one equal vote), the Scientific Method (focus on process and evidence, controlling for biases), and almost every other socio-cultural component of Modernism. Additionally, putting the individual back at the center automatically course corrects many of the illiberal downsides of both the woke left and woke right.
So much juicy territory here, thanks again for your high quality "overflowings"!
If we want Conservatives to accept the 'over-riding' value of liberalism (and we Can't rename it), maybe those of us who have called ourselves Liberal need to find another name for ourselves. I wonder what that could be? (I'm personally not crazy about the "left".)
In the UK, people on both the left and right call themselves liberal, because it is seen as on a different axis.
The committed woke don’t call themselves liberal because their beliefs are explicitly opposed to liberalism. The socialists certainly don’t call themselves liberal. I call myself a liberal leftie and also a progressive.
It would absolutely be helpful if liberals on the left in the US distinguished their commitment to individual liberty from their support for left-wing policies and principles.
I'm looking for suggestions of some language we can use (in the U.S.) to accomplish that. Not your responsibility to come up with that, but I'd hoped you'd have something besides "liberal leftie" -- which doesn't work, I don't think.
Would you consider laying this argument out in memes? I'm specifically thinking of side by side photo style memes...
"This is a Liberal." "This is NOT a Liberal."
"This is Liberalism." "This is just malignant ass-hattery disguised as Liberalism."
I really hope I never land on the wrong side of that second meme, but fair play is fair play.
Hmmm. I don’t think I’m very good at that, but can give it some thought!
Thanks for this piece here, Helen, I again appreciate the clarity of your thinking.
A challenge that I see comes with the assertion that core "given" of the Liberalism we want to keep in mind is the concept of individual liberty. This is certainly true and helpful in many ways, but still sets up an easy ability to mistakenly see the word "individual" there more as an adjective and "liberty" as the noun. Which then leads to all kinds of unhelpful debates and arguments over what we mean by "liberty," as well as most of the regressive thinking around diversity, equity, and inclusion where the actual individual human is often entirely negated.
In my opinion, viewing the "individual" as the noun, claiming the related characteristics of self-sovereignty and inalienable dignity as givens, then allows liberty to be seen as one of many natural consequence of this framing. This centrality of the individual also supports all the other terms and concepts in your word cloud, such as equality before the law, free speech, consent of the governed, etc...
It also directly implies Democratic participation (everybody gets one equal vote), the Scientific Method (focus on process and evidence, controlling for biases), and almost every other socio-cultural component of Modernism. Additionally, putting the individual back at the center automatically course corrects many of the illiberal downsides of both the woke left and woke right.
So much juicy territory here, thanks again for your high quality "overflowings"!
If we want Conservatives to accept the 'over-riding' value of liberalism (and we Can't rename it), maybe those of us who have called ourselves Liberal need to find another name for ourselves. I wonder what that could be? (I'm personally not crazy about the "left".)
In the UK, people on both the left and right call themselves liberal, because it is seen as on a different axis.
The committed woke don’t call themselves liberal because their beliefs are explicitly opposed to liberalism. The socialists certainly don’t call themselves liberal. I call myself a liberal leftie and also a progressive.
It would absolutely be helpful if liberals on the left in the US distinguished their commitment to individual liberty from their support for left-wing policies and principles.
I'm looking for suggestions of some language we can use (in the U.S.) to accomplish that. Not your responsibility to come up with that, but I'd hoped you'd have something besides "liberal leftie" -- which doesn't work, I don't think.
I don't know, I'm afraid. Does 'progressive' work better?
thanks for the effort. I'm afraid 'progressive' has become radical leftist in this country.