[lbo-talk] post analytical Marxist era

[Michael Smith]

On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 08:55 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2007, at 1:10 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
> 
> > that Pallas Athene of liberalism, Hillary Clinton
> 
> I hadn't realized until recently, thanks to lbo-talk, that the word  
> "liberal" meant so many things. Yoshie thinks the Bush administration  
> is secular liberal, and now we learn that Hillary's one too. I'd  
> thought that the Clintons, both of them, made their careers out of  
> differentiating themselves from the liberal inheritance 

I was using the word in what I take to be its usual sense in American 
English. What's the point in using a word in some idiosyncratic, 
non-obvious way? 

Of course sometimes it's useful to allude to meanings 
that a word may have had in other times or places -- "'liberal in 
the Manchester School sense" vel sim -- but 'liberal' more than 
most words has meant so many things in so many times and places 
that any use of the word in a non-current sense needs to be signaled 
explicitly. 

That said, I endorse all Doug's comments about Hillary.