Yes, there may be better ones. However, it is simply stupid to assume that conservative=capitalist and liberal=socialist. And yes, no person is completely affiliated with any one ideology, but has his/her own, which is then looked to fit into the society's chart, because people love simplifying things and OH CARP I'M DISCUSSING POLITICS ON THE INTERNET.
The really funny part is that liberalism is traditionally associated with laissez-faire capitalism.
Liberalism!=Libertarianism
No, FD was quite right. It's the 'murricans that never get their political stuff straight.
Yep. I would have clarified with "Unless you're a post-WWII American", but it didn't feel necessary given the demographics around here.
As a brief, slipshod explanation for Avis: Liberalism in the classical sense is and was the political doctrine of what we can think of as the western democracies from the Victorian era up through the inter-war period; it's associated with (as above) laissez-faire capitalism, the gold standard, individual liberties, and so forth. It's both less of an influence and less common as a basis for economic and political policy these days mostly because it took a lot of the blame (and rightly so) for the Great Depression.
Around that time period is when we saw the other major ideologies of the 20th century pop up: fascism, communism, and social democracy, though the last only existed in a handful of states (notably, Sweden) in the inter-war period. We all know what happened after WWII: fascism pretty much died out, communism was successful in a sense (insofar as that certain communist states survived to the present day, mostly by moving towards a mixed economy), classical liberalism went down the same road (it mostly survives in places like the U.S. as the other side of the coin of communism, also moving towards a mixed economy--a lot of the economic rhetoric and resistance to social safety nets in the U.S. is a relic of liberalism), while social democracy took off in Europe, possibly because it's generally the least extreme of the ideologies.
Of course that's a painful level of simplification, but it gets the general idea across. In a sense classical liberals actually are fairly similar to libertarians, insofar as that they advocated for free trade, limited government, individual liberties, &c., though it tended to be more oriented on idealism and progress than selfishness and a "got mine" attitude, even if libertarians point to classical liberalism as the source of their ideas. It's important to remember that the liberals were just as committed to the eugenics movement &c. in the '30s as fascists were, albeit from a different angle: this is a good point to be made regarding why simplifications of what went on in that time period tend to be fallacious and propaganda-ridden, but now I'm getting into a tangent and need to stop. :|
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Topic: Bay12 Census: Results out! (Read 24564 times)