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Would you elaborate on the ideal liberal platform? I see and hear comments like this quite frequently (from folks of all political alignments, interestingly) a

Would you elaborate on the ideal liberal platform? I see and hear comments like this quite frequently (from folks of all political alignments, interestingly) and I'm always interested to hear what beliefs and policies people around me want to see in their government but don't.

briandear 8y ago
Liberal is supposed to mean “freedom.” When a government tells you what to do, that isn’t liberal. Of course there is a government and even classical liberals acknowledge the need for some government, but liberal really should mean a support of a government that provides for a common defense and has a court system that would provide for the enforcement of civil contracts. A “liberal” government doesn’t mandate actions of private entities unless those mandates are to protect the life, liberty or property of other individuals. Mandating gender on corporate boards doesn’t protect any of that. Nobody has a right to serve on a board and not serving on a board isn’t threatening anyone’s right to pursue happiness or live their life as they see fit. In fact, it does the opposite: it imposes a requirement that limits the freedom of people to run their business how they see fit. Unless the running of that business infringes on the rights of others, the government really has no business with that sort of mandate. And the key to understanding this is that no person has a “right” to success or a right to a specific job — they have a right to pursue happiness, but not a right to actually be happy. Progressivism is well-intentioned totalitarianism. There is nothing wrong with supporting progressivism, but let’s not pretend is has anything to do with liberalism.
- shredprez 8y ago
  I'm not making a case for progressivism here and I'm clear on the traditional (and international?) definition of "liberal." I'm mainly interested in what specifically constitutes a liberal platform or policy model in the US. I genuinely don't know what it looks like. The descriptions I hear are typically hand-wavey in a way that reminds me of communist rhetoric; lots of ideals, few details, and typically reactionary (defined by what it isn't). I'm assuming this is a gap in my knowledge/experience and I'd love to fill it in.
  - clarkmoody 8y ago
    The libertarians are most in line with a classical liberal ideology. It is a platform that acknowledges individual rights that exist independent of government, which finds its only legitimate role in ensuring those rights. Those rights are life, liberty, and property. Any policy that prefers individual liberty and private property over government power and government-granted privileges would be more libertarian. Libertarians support: - Decriminalization of all "moral crimes" such as drug possession and use, prostitution, etc - Freedom of trade and exchange, zero tariffs or import/export restrictions, elimination of price-gouging laws - Elimination of taxation, government welfare programs, corporate welfare - Immediate cessation of all foreign wars and assuming a defensive posture in foreign policy - Elimination of most, if not all, regulations on consumer goods - Sound money and the elimination of fractional reserve banking For the most pure, detailed explanation of libertarianism, check out The Ethics of Liberty[1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Liberty-Murray-N-Rothbard/dp/0814775594/ https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Liberty-Murray-N-Rothbard/dp/0...
    - shredprez 8y ago
      Great response, thank you!
  - nostromo 8y ago
    If you want details, you'll have to look beyond internet comments. :) Read The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty by Hayek for a deep discussion of liberalism. The Wealth of Nations and Free to Choose are also great books to consider.
    - shredprez 8y ago
      Fair enough :) Thanks for the recommendations!
- moate 8y ago
  But this is where the Marxist has to step in and point out that "the invisible hand" doesn't work. It's how you get robber-barons and child labor and unlivable wages. Having a system in which a group sees such little representation begs the question of WHY. The conclusion being drawn (accurately or not) by the progressive liberals is that the game is being fixed (perhaps intentionally, perhaps not) The argument between "classical liberals" or libertarians or whatever they're calling themselves that day and progressive liberals is the belief that this will all just sort itself out if the government looks the other way and lets the economy run itself. We have seen time and time and time and time again that all that does is lead towards monopolies and exploitation of the masses. You can't possibly pretend that pure unadulterated capitalism is the best choice, since it just winds up leading to people being enslaved (literally or figuratively), murdered and oppressed. Anarcho-capitalism is a horrible thing. It's impossible to tell what's market forces, and what's unfair advantages. The progressive liberals are of the opinion that in order for the whole to be better, sometimes the state needs to step in and act force people to play nice where it believes they aren't. It's not perfect, but it's a long slippery slope from totalitarian gulags to "put one fucking woman on your board you idiots".
debacle 8y ago
Not the OP, but the best way to contrast liberalism is from the perspective of Puritanism. Puritans were certainly not liberal socially, but they were also not liberal governmentally - many of the laws in Puritanical societies were highly restrictive, and pre-modern liberalism had its roots in creating a more free society - Puritanism is a non-negligible part of American history. Modern leftism tends to be more authoritarian - it encourages restrictive legislation as a mechanism for progress. This is the dystopian future alluded to in a lot of e.g. Heinlein's work - things like forced sexual liberalism, erosion of parental rights or even parentage itself, elimination of the individual for the cause, and discrimination against the individual based on factors outside of their control. Americans tend to view political affiliation as a binary - left or right, progressive or conservative, liberal or authoritarian. That's because, due to our history, we have always tended to have a leftist, progressive, liberal party contrasted with a right-leaning, conservative, authoritarian party. That language is in and of itself somewhat complex - prohibitionists were considered progressives in their time, though today we would view them as otherwise.
- shredprez 8y ago
  Great response, the historical Puritan context is something I hadn't considered before. I mention in another response that I'm looking for a description or model that isn't reactionary, but your reply makes me wonder if that's even possible. Is Liberalism more of an emergent, regulating social phenomena than a proper political alignment?
  - debacle 8y ago
    What do you mean a model that isn't reactionary? Liberalism I think has two camps: 1. We are forcing people to do the wrong things and should do that less. 2. We shouldn't force people to do anything (libertarianism). The problem with the latter is obviously that libertarians tend to be ignorant of the social contract, but the problem with the former is that lots of those type of liberals stop being liberals when they're the ones in power.
scythe 8y ago
In many other countries, the right-wing party is called "Liberal". The reason is that the history of liberalism is closely intertwined with the history of economics, but they started to diverge when economists started to argue that wage floors and welfare could result in slower economic progress. The most extreme example of the latter argument is John von Neumann's turnpike theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnpike_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnpike_theory There was a sort of "split" between people who wanted to maximize economic growth and people who wanted to optimize for some other measures of social well-being, but, crucially, they were both operating within the "social metric optimization" context of 19th century liberalism, aka classical liberalism, which included e.g. Bentham, Mill, and Schopenhauer. The major 19th century competitors to this philosophy were the various flavors of socialism, largely comprising the followers of Marx and Ricardo, which prefer to build social structures that naturally encourage human freedom (at least in theory), and also the various flavors of conservatism, which aim to preserve historical social structures believed to be beneficial for reasons that are often not clearly expressed. In countries subject to colonial conquest -- that is, everywhere except Western Europe, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Oman, Thailand, China and Japan -- these historical social structures were destroyed, and along with them the population's appetite for conservatism. In Japan, Italy and Germany, conservatism was heavily curtailed after World War II. When liberalism's main competitor was conservatism, the growth-maximizers tended to align themselves with the conservatives and liberals were on the "left". But when it was socialism, the well-being-maximizers aligned themselves with the socialists and liberals were on the "right". What connects the two kinds of liberals is a reliance on numerical measurements of individual status (wealth, happiness, lifespan) and dynamical theories (economics, sociology) to define, promote and produce social progress.
- shredprez 8y ago
  This is extremely illuminating; thank you for taking the time to respond.

briandear 8y ago

Liberal is supposed to mean “freedom.” When a government tells you what to do, that isn’t liberal. Of course there is a government and even classical liberals acknowledge the need for some government, but liberal really should mean a support of a government that provides for a common defense and has a court system that would provide for the enforcement of civil contracts. A “liberal” government doesn’t mandate actions of private entities unless those mandates are to protect the life, liberty or property of other individuals. Mandating gender on corporate boards doesn’t protect any of that. Nobody has a right to serve on a board and not serving on a board isn’t threatening anyone’s right to pursue happiness or live their life as they see fit. In fact, it does the opposite: it imposes a requirement that limits the freedom of people to run their business how they see fit. Unless the running of that business infringes on the rights of others, the government really has no business with that sort of mandate. And the key to understanding this is that no person has a “right” to success or a right to a specific job — they have a right to pursue happiness, but not a right to actually be happy. Progressivism is well-intentioned totalitarianism. There is nothing wrong with supporting progressivism, but let’s not pretend is has anything to do with liberalism.

shredprez 8y ago
I'm not making a case for progressivism here and I'm clear on the traditional (and international?) definition of "liberal." I'm mainly interested in what specifically constitutes a liberal platform or policy model in the US. I genuinely don't know what it looks like. The descriptions I hear are typically hand-wavey in a way that reminds me of communist rhetoric; lots of ideals, few details, and typically reactionary (defined by what it isn't). I'm assuming this is a gap in my knowledge/experience and I'd love to fill it in.
- clarkmoody 8y ago
  The libertarians are most in line with a classical liberal ideology. It is a platform that acknowledges individual rights that exist independent of government, which finds its only legitimate role in ensuring those rights. Those rights are life, liberty, and property. Any policy that prefers individual liberty and private property over government power and government-granted privileges would be more libertarian. Libertarians support: - Decriminalization of all "moral crimes" such as drug possession and use, prostitution, etc - Freedom of trade and exchange, zero tariffs or import/export restrictions, elimination of price-gouging laws - Elimination of taxation, government welfare programs, corporate welfare - Immediate cessation of all foreign wars and assuming a defensive posture in foreign policy - Elimination of most, if not all, regulations on consumer goods - Sound money and the elimination of fractional reserve banking For the most pure, detailed explanation of libertarianism, check out The Ethics of Liberty[1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Liberty-Murray-N-Rothbard/dp/0814775594/ https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Liberty-Murray-N-Rothbard/dp/0...
  - shredprez 8y ago
    Great response, thank you!
- nostromo 8y ago
  If you want details, you'll have to look beyond internet comments. :) Read The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty by Hayek for a deep discussion of liberalism. The Wealth of Nations and Free to Choose are also great books to consider.
  - shredprez 8y ago
    Fair enough :) Thanks for the recommendations!
moate 8y ago
But this is where the Marxist has to step in and point out that "the invisible hand" doesn't work. It's how you get robber-barons and child labor and unlivable wages. Having a system in which a group sees such little representation begs the question of WHY. The conclusion being drawn (accurately or not) by the progressive liberals is that the game is being fixed (perhaps intentionally, perhaps not) The argument between "classical liberals" or libertarians or whatever they're calling themselves that day and progressive liberals is the belief that this will all just sort itself out if the government looks the other way and lets the economy run itself. We have seen time and time and time and time again that all that does is lead towards monopolies and exploitation of the masses. You can't possibly pretend that pure unadulterated capitalism is the best choice, since it just winds up leading to people being enslaved (literally or figuratively), murdered and oppressed. Anarcho-capitalism is a horrible thing. It's impossible to tell what's market forces, and what's unfair advantages. The progressive liberals are of the opinion that in order for the whole to be better, sometimes the state needs to step in and act force people to play nice where it believes they aren't. It's not perfect, but it's a long slippery slope from totalitarian gulags to "put one fucking woman on your board you idiots".

debacle 8y ago

Not the OP, but the best way to contrast liberalism is from the perspective of Puritanism. Puritans were certainly not liberal socially, but they were also not liberal governmentally - many of the laws in Puritanical societies were highly restrictive, and pre-modern liberalism had its roots in creating a more free society - Puritanism is a non-negligible part of American history. Modern leftism tends to be more authoritarian - it encourages restrictive legislation as a mechanism for progress. This is the dystopian future alluded to in a lot of e.g. Heinlein's work - things like forced sexual liberalism, erosion of parental rights or even parentage itself, elimination of the individual for the cause, and discrimination against the individual based on factors outside of their control. Americans tend to view political affiliation as a binary - left or right, progressive or conservative, liberal or authoritarian. That's because, due to our history, we have always tended to have a leftist, progressive, liberal party contrasted with a right-leaning, conservative, authoritarian party. That language is in and of itself somewhat complex - prohibitionists were considered progressives in their time, though today we would view them as otherwise.

shredprez 8y ago
Great response, the historical Puritan context is something I hadn't considered before. I mention in another response that I'm looking for a description or model that isn't reactionary, but your reply makes me wonder if that's even possible. Is Liberalism more of an emergent, regulating social phenomena than a proper political alignment?
- debacle 8y ago
  What do you mean a model that isn't reactionary? Liberalism I think has two camps: 1. We are forcing people to do the wrong things and should do that less. 2. We shouldn't force people to do anything (libertarianism). The problem with the latter is obviously that libertarians tend to be ignorant of the social contract, but the problem with the former is that lots of those type of liberals stop being liberals when they're the ones in power.

scythe 8y ago

In many other countries, the right-wing party is called "Liberal". The reason is that the history of liberalism is closely intertwined with the history of economics, but they started to diverge when economists started to argue that wage floors and welfare could result in slower economic progress. The most extreme example of the latter argument is John von Neumann's turnpike theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnpike_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnpike_theory There was a sort of "split" between people who wanted to maximize economic growth and people who wanted to optimize for some other measures of social well-being, but, crucially, they were both operating within the "social metric optimization" context of 19th century liberalism, aka classical liberalism, which included e.g. Bentham, Mill, and Schopenhauer. The major 19th century competitors to this philosophy were the various flavors of socialism, largely comprising the followers of Marx and Ricardo, which prefer to build social structures that naturally encourage human freedom (at least in theory), and also the various flavors of conservatism, which aim to preserve historical social structures believed to be beneficial for reasons that are often not clearly expressed. In countries subject to colonial conquest -- that is, everywhere except Western Europe, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Oman, Thailand, China and Japan -- these historical social structures were destroyed, and along with them the population's appetite for conservatism. In Japan, Italy and Germany, conservatism was heavily curtailed after World War II. When liberalism's main competitor was conservatism, the growth-maximizers tended to align themselves with the conservatives and liberals were on the "left". But when it was socialism, the well-being-maximizers aligned themselves with the socialists and liberals were on the "right". What connects the two kinds of liberals is a reliance on numerical measurements of individual status (wealth, happiness, lifespan) and dynamical theories (economics, sociology) to define, promote and produce social progress.

shredprez 8y ago
This is extremely illuminating; thank you for taking the time to respond.