[proginthebox]

Liberalism is always against an axis. As such, there are two different factors in liberalism, Social and Economic. The so-called liberals in America Liberals are socially liberal but economically conservative. While American conservatives are economically liberal but socially conservative.

[goatlover]

So American libertarians are the true liberals?

[proginthebox]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass

[iamnothere]

A number of them refer to themselves as "classical liberals" in an attempt to reclaim the continental definition of liberal, but in the US media at least it feels like the definition has permanently shifted. This makes it awfully confusing when discussing US politics internationally. (Maybe one day we'll align our language with the rest of the world, and maybe one day we'll adopt the metric system too.)

[virmundi]

Yes. The common use of the word Liberal means Progressive. Progressives, while sounding like they want progress, want regulation of anything they don't like. They want to regulate speech. They want to regulate the energy source that would have prevented Global Warming, nuclear. The list goes on. Welcome to the Liberals of modernity.

[happytoexplain]

My observations don't align with yours, though your writing is possibly emotionally driven. I don't think "progressives", on average, want to legally regulate nuclear power and speech in harmful ways. But mostly, I don't understand the implication that progress as in "progressive" is mutually exclusive from regulation. Can you clarify where that comes from?

[virmundi]

Let's take nuclear. Jimmy Carter and the Liberals of his age were against recycling of fuel. They regulated that all spent fuel had to be stored in a super complex system that protected humanity from the fuel. The regulations are so onerous that to this day many power plants in the US are stockpiling their spent fuel because we can't build a facility that actually satisfies the requirements due to other regulations.

Another example, the Liberals want to ban hate speech. When pressed the definition of hate speech is any speech that contradicts their own. They don't hold to the Enlightenment ideal of discussing radical views. Instead, if anyone appeals to science, hard science, that disagrees with one of their many incoherent points, that person is banned from the Academy.

Finally, take SF. This city likes to describe itself as one of the most Liberal in the country. Those same Liberals have effectively priced out the majority of middle-class Americans. You know? The one they supposedly love. They did this through zoning regulations. Buildings can only be so tall. You can have only so many families per unit. They can only exist in certain locations. All of the regulation adds up to the problems SF faces today.

In a general sense, there is also the moral regulations the modern Liberals put on us. They continue to enforce the plantation on the black population, and will for decades to come. Liberals hold blacks as perpetual children. They need welfare because they are poorly educated and oppressed by the white man. Now step back and you'll see that they are oppressed by whites: white liberals. For 60 years or more Liberal cities like Chicago, LA, New York all have done nothing to improve the lots of blacks. They are kept as subsistence levels. Those Liberal bastions could have improved housing. They could have improved education. They could have withheld resources to force a change in the individual to learn and improve. They have done nothing. Like children, they shouldn't marry. The Liberals have rigged the welfare laws at all levels to destroy the home by excluding the father. Again, the list goes on. I leave it to reader to research this on their own.

In the end the Liberal of today is the authoritarian of yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WEh51z1H_o

[clairity]

this second comment is much more constructive than your first one, because you criticized specific policies for their results. let's keep putting aside the tribal and partisan language and come together to brainstorm and debate solutions.

and yes, we need to ease nuclear regulations, protect all speech, and fix regulations around housing (including the regulation of interest rates through freddie/fannie).

a key fix to everything you said about the suppression of black folks (and most of the rest of us) is a return to a progressive tax system. a few decades ago, the US taxed the 1% at up to 90%, didn't have a separate capital gains tax, had an inheritance tax that encouraged industry, and didn't have corporate tax shields (along with encouraging immigration). and thus we prospered.

[masonic]

  a few decades ago, the US taxed the 1% at up to 90%

Almost six decades ago. (Meanwhile, it was 95% in England).

The original driver of reducing rates in the US? John F. Kennedy. There's a great speech he gave before The Commonwealth Club on this very subject; audio is available online.