[bee_rider]

Realistically the mainstream Democratic Party is liberal in the sense that you use it; the US is a fundamentally liberal place, a lot of Republicans are as well.

Even the idea of “banning free speech” that you mention is implemented in a liberal fashion in the US. There are rarely calls for the government to actually ban speech via laws. The ground where that’s fought is actually “should private companies broadcast/highlight via algorithm the speech of individuals who say things I don’t like,” it is a formulation that pits the speech rights of the corporation against the self-expression of the individuals using their services.

The framing you quoted (“these liberals who want to ban free speech”) is often used by one side to pitch the other side as falling outside the traditional free-speech consensus.

[AnimalMuppet]

> The framing you quoted (“these liberals who want to ban free speech”) is often used by one side to pitch the other side as falling outside the traditional liberal consensus.

I disagree, at least a bit. I think "liberal" here is just used as "the bad tribe". It's not saying that they're not living up to their values, it's just saying that they're "them".

[bee_rider]

I can definitely see how what I wrote was unclear there, sorry. Inside the quotes, “liberal” was used in the sense that skrebble was using it inside their hypothetical quote, so, basically a faction of team-blue. Afterwards my intent was to continue using it in the way that he (outside his hypothetical quote) and I (everywhere) had been using it, related to the philosophy of liberalism. I’ll try to edit it for clarity, sorry…