[lbo-talk] Liberals

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Tue May 31 17:11:48 PDT 2011


On Tue, 31 May 2011 23:49:37 +0000 (UTC) 123hop at comcast.net writes:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Farmelant" <farmelantj at juno.com>
>
>
> That's because you're originally from Europe and
> you're thinking of the label the way that most Europeans
> do. Friedrich Hayek always insisted on calling himself
> a "liberal", and he was alway clear that meant supporting
> free-market economics. In the US, the term "liberal"
> is generally used in place of the term "social democrat."
> Prior to the 1980s, an American liberal was someone
> who generally supported a relatively generous welfare
> state.
>
> ------
> Maybe. But in the U.S. "neo-liberal" is used to mean "hard-core free
> market supporter", so here too there is the eonomic sense of
> liberal.

The kind of American liberalism that flourished from the 1930s to the 1970s has been pretty much dead for quite some time. As I said before, in the US a "liberal" was pretty much the same as what Europeans called a "social democrat". However, now a days, the kind of social democracy that flourished after the Second World, is also pretty much dead too, having succumbed to Third Way politics, which was basically meant presenting neo-liberalism with a "human face." Now a days, people who in the past might have called themselves "social democrats" or liberals (in the American sense), are for most intents and purposes neo-liberals anyway. So it seems that things have reverted back to the more traditional meaning of liberal.

Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math


>
> Joanna
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