As I have repeatedly explained, and will again I am using the term liberal in a standard minimalist sense:
Political liberalism is the view that the best form of government involves universal suffrage, competitive elections, and extensive political and civil liberties. This isn't an abstract ideal, it's actually a view maintained by hundreds of millions of people.
Philosophical liberalism is the view that the government of a good society should be as neutral as possible on what ends are good to pursue or what is the best form of life to live, thus should promote freedom, tolerance, and diversity. This is a bit touchier,as it is hard to persuade people who are sure they are right that others ought to be made to go along even if they disagree, but even so this idea has more real world traction than, sat, public ownership of productive assets.
None of these views touch very deeply on the proper extend of regulation or how intrusive and paternalistic a state should be. You can believe both of these things and advocate a minimalist, non-intrusive small government or a big government with a lot of paternalist regulation.
The ideas go to the grounds for policy and the conditions under which it is adopted. Mandated motorcycle helmets, required insurance (auto, health, retirement, whatever), the whole panoply that right wing libertarians and apparently you too trot out to scare people are OK with liberalism if adopted by universal suffrage with competitive political parties under conditions of extensive civil and political liberties, and if they are adopted on a minimalist basis democratically acceptable to people of widely divergent ideas about what's good and right, so that the adoption of these policies does not require the state to enforce one group's (or coalition's) deep and controversial sense of the good.
Neither of my uses of the term liberal are the least bit idiosyncratic. Both of them have pedigrees hundreds of years old, although the older thinkers don't put all the elements together in just this way.
It is no more peculiar to insist on this way of talking that to say, for example, that socialism means not what actual real world socialists have mainly done when they have gotten into power (massacred real and imagined opposition, imposed one-party dictatorships and idiotic censorship, choked the economy with a command style central planning, etc) -- not that, that's not what we mean when we say we are socialists. What _we_ mean is that best form of economy involves collective control of the productive assets, the abolition of wage labor and the common appropriation of the fruits of collective labor, having ordinary working people determine together their own lives and destiny.
There are lots of self-styled socialists suckier than any liberal. McNamara, Carter, the Clintons were bad. Pol Pot was way worse.
So, herza deal. You stop saying, Nanny state, Balkan war, Bill & Hilary Clinton, when I say liberal, and I still stop saying gulag, Zhdanovism, Cultural Revolution, Stalin Mao when you say socialist, OK? (Btw, you won't catch Billary C saying they are a liberal, not on yer life.)
No offense, Michael, I know you are not an apologist for forced labor, torture and murder of families of enemies of the people, and calculated death by famine of tens of millions to exterminate the kulaks as a class. So shut the fuck up about me and Hilary. She won't give me the tima day.
--- Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-09-24 at 20:49 -0700, andie
> nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > 1) there isn't a liberal version of the good life,
> > being a political liberal means having the state
> be as
> > neutral as possible on visions of the good life.
>
> This doesn't seem a very accurate description of
> actually-
> existing liberals, who as far as I can tell are
> great
> promoters of regulation by the wise for the benefit
> of
> the unwise (whether the latter like it or not).
> Child
> seats in cars, motorcycle helmets, no-smoking rules
> --
> and now, of course, we have the latest bright idea,
> compulsory enrollment in health insurance, recently
> adopted by that Pallas Athene of liberalism, Hillary
>
> Clinton.
>
> No offense, Andie -- I'm really confused. Are you
> talking about actual liberals, or what "liberalism"
> ought to mean?
>
> Then, of course, there are, and were, and apparently
>
> ever will be, Cold war liberals, and Bomb Serbia
> liberals, and Iran Sucks liberals.... but enough
> already.
>
>
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