The difference between classical liberalism and modern "progressivism."

[Daelak]

because history time and time again has shown that lowering taxes helps the economy just ask JFK or R. Reagan. And your solution is if raising taxes didn't work because we didn't raise them enough.
so who should i believe? should i believe in historical facts or your cockamamie philosophy if something doesn't work and it just made it worse lets do more of it

Would you believe me that taxes are at an all time low in the history of the US?

[Elegiac]

because history time and time again has shown that lowering taxes helps the economy just ask JFK or R. Reagan. And your solution is if raising taxes didn't work because we didn't raise them enough.
so who should i believe? should i believe in historical facts or your cockamamie philosophy if something doesn't work and it just made it worse lets do more of it

Lowering taxes on the middle class works. Reagan's tax cuts were stupid as hell because he decided to lower taxes while increasing spending.

[Rukentuts]

he decided to lower taxes while increasing spending.

Gee, I wonder who else did that.

[Elegiac]

Gee, I wonder who else did that.

We need more history majors in government.

[Rukentuts]

We need more history majors in government.

I nominate Newt Gingrich.

[Elegiac]

I nominate Newt Gingrich.

He's already in government. And I meant history majors, not revisionist majors.

[Rukentuts]

He's already in government. And I meant history majors, not revisionist majors.

I was being intentionally obtuse for humor

What we need in politics are people that have un-partisan educated advisers that remain uncorrupted by politics, and politicians that actually pay heed to rational advice from these advisers.

Ex. I'm not an expert on many things. Which is why I'd like economists, astronomers, etc. whispering in my ear rather than Karl Rove.

[Elegiac]

I was being intentionally obtuse for humor

What we need in politics are people that have un-partisan educated advisers that remain uncorrupted by politics, and politicians that actually pay heed to rational advice from these advisers.

Ex. I'm not an expert on many things. Which is why I'd like economists, astronomers, etc. whispering in my ear rather than Karl Rove.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

[Slybak]

Lowering taxes on the middle class works. Reagan's tax cuts were stupid as hell because he decided to lower taxes while increasing spending.

Expansionary fiscal policy is sound under certain circumstances, particularly when the private sector is undergoing a mass deleveraging and/or when interest rates are extremely low (i.e. where borrowing money to pay for a service or project and paying it off over time is cheaper than raising taxes for it immediately). Neither was the case in the early 80s, and the private sector was leveraging considerable debt in the early 2000s via the real estate boom.

[Rukentuts]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy

If they could be completely objective, I'd like it.

The only problem is that positions encompass a "jack-of-all-trades" type of thing. For example the President makes decisions on a multitude of subjects. This is why I said they should be advisers.

[Linkedblade]

No, it isn't. Not by any stretch of the imagination or wish-filled historical revisionism. As a political philosophy, libertarianism emerged in mid-19th century France as a form of anarcho-socialism, most notably championed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and this is what libertarianism still means throughout most of the world. The only major exception is the United States, were libertarianism rose as a revanchist and reactionary movement against liberalism in the early 20th century.

Uh no. Liberalism and Libertarianism mean the exact same thing and were created in the same exact time period, because they are one in the same. The more modern definitions are totally bastardized.

[Rukentuts]

Uh no. Liberalism and Libertarianism mean the exact same thing and were created in the same exact time period, because they are one in the same. The more modern definitions are totally bastardized.

They may have meant the same thing at one point in time, but the modern definitions are for concepts that are completely unrelated. It's like size and color are the same thing.

[Slybak]

Uh no. Liberalism and Libertarianism mean the exact same thing and were created in the same exact time period, because they are one in the same.

No they aren't and no they didn't. There were no Libertarians in the 18th century Scottish Highlands or Parisian salons, particularly if you adhere to the Americanized definition of the philosophy. Libertarianism arose as a criticism of the modern regulatory state. It is sheer historical revisionism to conflate the classical liberals' critique of government interference with the libertarian critique, because "interference" takes on different meanings in these contexts.

To classical liberals like Adam Smith, the height of government interference in economic life was the British East India Company; a monopoly on commerce maintained and advanced by the apparatus of the state. Competitors were barred from entry into the market by national fiat. Mercantilist ideology held that the development of wealth was a zero-sum game between entire nations based on balances of trade and the exploitation of colonial resources.

To American libertarians like Albert Jay Nock and his successors (Murray Rothbard, Frank Chodorov, Ayn Rand, etc), the height of government interference in economic life was the regulatory state; a legal regimen that constrained private power through the rationale of positive liberty. Those who opposed the regulatory state adopted the libertarian moniker because libertarianism, as a philosophical movement, was built upon the notion of free will.

The problem with American libertarians is that they look back to classical liberals and (a) exclusively privilege the means by which they argued for a liberal society and (b) entirely divorce classical liberals from their historical context. It ignores history yet depends on history to give itself meaning and legitimacy. That makes it reactionary, not liberal.

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 07:02 PM ----------

They may have meant the same thing at one point in time, but the modern definitions are for concepts that are completely unrelated. It's like size and color are the same thing.

Liberalism and libertarianism never meant the same thing.

Liberalism went through a series of ideological evolutions, worldwide, between 1850 and 1930 based principally on the rise of the industrial state (conservatism did as well). But at its core was always the primacy of individual liberty - political, social, and economic - and the dissolution of barriers to the exercise of individual liberty. As those barriers changed, so did liberalism. The state ceased becoming the major obstacle to the exercise of liberty, and started being seen as the necessary guarantor of liberty as various non-state tyrannies (i.e. the slave power, the trust and cartel, etc) became preeminent during industrialization. Thus the modern regulatory state was born.

Libertarianism, at least in the American sense, came after that. It has many of the same anarchist roots of European libertarianism, and in many ways is a brand of right-wing anarchism, but principally developed as a reaction to liberalism and the creation of the modern regulatory state.

[Linkedblade]

<snip>

Ok, so we agree that every term in this thread has changed since their incarnation.

There are many many charts and graphs that show left/right wing and guess what? None of them mean a single concrete thing. If anything libertarianism is centrist when compared to anarchy and statism. Because we are in favor of a government, just not one that is all powerful.

[Adam Jensen]

"Progressive liberalism" on the other hand is a relatively new ideology that is founded on baseless bullshit and propaganda that I lapped up as if it were water and I were a thirsty puppy

Sorry Arctic Daishi, that is NOT what modern liberals believe.

[Dezerte]

I think this topic also serves as a reminder as to why it's best not to identify yourself with any group, because it immediately sets people up with certain preconceived notions about said person, and that's an unnecessary obstacle in the way of discussions.

[ptwonline]

Would you believe me that taxes are at an all time low in the history of the US?

In the modern era. Not all-time.

[Slybak]

Ok, so we agree that every term in this thread has changed since their incarnation.

To some extent, yes. The core principles of liberalism have remained intact, they're simply focused on different threats to liberty than those that existed 250 years ago.

But the claim that libertarianism is the same as liberalism is factually incorrect. Libertarianism arose as a critique of the regulatory state, while classical liberalism predated the regulatory state.

That contemporary libertarians would like to claim classical liberals as their forebears, and think that rebaptizing dead philosophers as libertarians because they foolishly think the act confers some kind of historical legitimacy, is both irrelevant and stupid. Irrelevant because saying you're a liberal doesn't make you one, and stupid because Adam Smith has about as much to say about the modern regulatory state as George Washington has to say about cyber-terrorism.

[Elegiac]

I think this topic also serves as a reminder as to why it's best not to identify yourself with any group, because it immediately sets people up with certain preconceived notions about said person, and that's an unnecessary obstacle in the way of discussions.

I'm a social democratic-republican.

[Sunseeker]

Aside from the fact that both "Progressive liberalism" and "classical liberalism" have the word "liberalism" in them, they share about squat beyond that, even their roots are unrelated.