Why does the word Liberalism confuse Americans?

[Deleted]

Liberalism definition

Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.[1][2] The former principle is stressed in classical liberalism while the latter is more evident in social liberalism.[3]

Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others; but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty.

a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard

American's assumed definition

Left wing authoritarianism.

Government poking themselves into everything.

"Argh those dirty liberals, gonna come and steal my guns and make me pay for lies about the world warming"

I always get confused when particularly the American libertarian right keeps ranting on about the evils of liberalism, when by definition they're usually the closest followers to liberal political and economic theory.


So why is it this word has gained a meaning pretty much completely opposite to the rest of the world's definition exclusively in America?

[Sir Andy]

Because somehow, Liberal has been twisted from "champions of liberty and rights" to "leftist".

[Kaleredar]

Why do all people in England drink tea and eat biscuits while talking about the queen?


Also

Why do people from other countries always assume that everyone in America thinks one way?

[Noradin]

I guess it might be because they have no compunction about political slander and thus revel in it until every political definition is twisted beyond recognition.

[Netherspark]

Americans have a habit of dividing society into all these separate groups, many of them opposing eachother (liberals and conservatives, catholic and protstant, pro-life & pro-choice, north and south, african americans, irish, italian), then constantly making a big deal about all of them, reinforcing the divisions and creating an "us verses them" mentality.

In this case, "liberals" are the target of policital propaganda.

[Noradin]

Why do people from other countries always assume that everyone in America thinks one way?

Because it is the truth!

Why does everyone who disagrees always pretend to assume the other side was unaware of any exceptions unless they explicitely state them?

[Deleted]

Well, Im a right wing liberal.. (I cant even see how a leftist can be a liberal cause they believe greater good justifies inequality and unfair treatment).

[Zandalarian Paladin]

From what I could observe as an outsider (I'm canadian), americans tend to polarize everything. I guess shades of grey aren't your thing.

[Azadina]

Why do some people make silly generalizations of entire countries worth of people, because of how few of them seem like?

[zebreck]

There's an incredibly simple explanation for this actually. There's been a targeted, sustained, intentional campaign to make the word 'liberal' have bad connotations for about 40 years or so. Go look up the John Birch Society, that should give you a good introduction to movement conservatism and their attack on the new deal consensus. The spark notes version is that the policies of democratic socialism are overwhelmingly popular with people, so to implement policies that contradict them requires you to re-frame the debate along ideological lines, casting democratic socialists as evil. The campaign to do so has been hugely successful in the U.S. and that's lead to 'liberal' being a snarl word instead of a useful descriptor of political ideology.

[Spectral]

Probably, at least in part, because the meaning of the word has become a bit confusing to people that have encountered some very illiberal leftists that say they're liberal. When self-identified Marxists also say, "I am a liberal" and you frequently hear that libertarians aren't liberal, yeah, people are going to get a bit confused about the matter.

[Deleted]

Libertarian was word coined because the right-wingers that wanted to be Anarchists .

but they didn't want to be anarchists - the vast majority of them are statists.
and Anarchy cannot be statist.

[Spectral]

Liberal is a centrist philosophy on the political spectrum. Further left of it you have socialism and even further left of that you have communism.

Personally I disagree with 'liberals' being 'leftist'. Leftist means socialism, and tends to mean anti-capitalism, including wanting to regulate it heavily with forms of socialism or other kinds of economies.

I would say this is accurate. The confusion, I think, comes at least in part from Americans that are pretty enthusiastically anti-capitalist, but identify the word "liberal" as having positive connotations, and thus use it to describe themselves.

[Fencers]

Marketing. Right Wing groups and parties have very effectively marketing anti-intellectualism and capitalism as 'sensible' ideas and many liberal ideas faulty.

Many Americans enjoy a fairly stable lifestyle w/ tons of convenience and personal autonomy; so it's easy to buy into the type of marketing that suggests global warming a hoax when you drive a honkin' pick-up truck down a 6 lane highway and buy gas for $2.94 a gallon, have a shopping mall within ~2 miles of you at almost all times, 24/7 cities, internet, one hour Amazon deliveries, 10 min Jimmy Johns deliveries, etc.

Basically, marketing and relative ease of living.

[Shibito]

Libertarian was word coined because the right-wingers that wanted to be Anarchists and have as little government intervention as possible wanted to distance themselves from the rebelious connonation of the word. Libertarian is basically a synonym for Anarchist, or more correctly: Anarcho-capitalist. It's why it's pretty funny to usually see someone going off on a rant against 'teenage' anarchists, but then declare themselves as a libertarian...

Liberal is a centrist philosophy on the political spectrum. Further left of it you have socialism and even further left of that you have communism.

Personally I disagree with 'liberals' being 'leftist'. Leftist means socialism, and tends to mean anti-capitalism, including wanting to regulate it heavily with forms of socialism or other kinds of economies.

Now take this even further, and you'll see that there is almost no difference between 'liberal' and 'libertarian', as they both focus on individual freedom. So basically you got two political parties: Freedom A and Freedom B, it just seems that liberal seems more focused on creating opportunity and protecting the weak, while the libertarians don't care about those things.

Tell us about the belgian political system since you are flemish.

[the game]

Maybe England should worry about themselves instead of lumping all Americans in with every stereotype they can think of.

[Stormdash]

Short version is, "liberal" in American political discourse refers to a political philosophy that is actually pretty damn contrary to "classical Liberalism" as one would discuss in a political science textbook. It's led to some concept confusion, because there's no generally accepted way to distinguish between the two near-opposites, i.e. "modern liberal" vs. "classical liberal"; people that know both words and the distinctions usually just use "liberal" and let context distinguish. For a big fundamental difference, classical Liberalism is intrinsically an individualist system whereas modern "liberalism"/"progressivism" is generally collectivist.

[jellmoo]

Political rhetoric and definitions seem to vary wildly by country. For the United States, it seems that the McCarthyism of the 50's really did a number on the views of the political landscape. Anything viewed remotely as socialist was immediately vilified. During this time, it looks like self-described liberals were lumped in with those of leftist tendency.

Here in Canada, one of our major political parties is the Liberal Party of Canada. This party is traditionally seen as a Centrist party, though throughout the years it was waffled between Left and Right of Center. Canadian politics being what it is though, the term Liberal never really had that same negative connotation as in the US. That being said, because we don't have a 2 party system, we don't tend to lump ideologies into buckets quite so much as in the US.

[zenkai]

Liberalism definition








American's assumed definition




I always get confused when particularly the American libertarian right keeps ranting on about the evils of liberalism, when by definition they're usually the closest followers to liberal political and economic theory.


So why is it this word has gained a meaning pretty much completely opposite to the rest of the world's definition exclusively in America?

Why does everyone outside of America think they know everything about Americans? You're doing nothing but furthering this ignorance.

[Spectral]

Why does everyone outside of America think they know everything about Americans? You're doing nothing but furthering this ignorance.

Take it as a compliment - many people around the world are positively obsessed with the United States and what Americans do and think.