georgeob1 wrote:The meaning of political terms such as "liberal" and "Conservative" is in fact quite variable.
The only notable significant variation is as between the usage in the United States, and the usage everywhere else.
Quote:The original use of the term "liberal" in English politics was to modern free enterprise economic development and policies that are called "conservative" in the United States.
This is an utterly false statement. In 1819, labor organizers held what was then known as a "monster meeting" (which referred to the number of people attending) in St. Peters Fields near Manchester. Local authorities had decided in advance that this would be a dangerous event, and they asked for (and received) regular troops in the form of the 15th Hussars, a battalion of infantry, and a battery of the Royal Artillery. In addition, a several of troops of the local yoemanry cavalry, popularly known both before and after as the "Tory cavalry," were also on hand, on the delusive theory that local men would be less offensive to those gathering for the meeting. It was afterward largely charged that most of the yoemanry were in relative degrees of drunkenness at the time, and it is noteworthy that when the Hussars finally went in, they took several members of the yoemanry, including officers, into custody along with the alleged ring leaders of the meeting.
When the local Manchester decided the meeting was getting out of hand (it's principal themes were an end to the Corn Laws, a call for annual Parliaments, vote by ballot [i.e., secret ballot rather than public declaration] and universal suffrage), they sent in the yoemanry. They got out of hand as well, and the Hussars charged in to restore order among the meeting participants and the yoemanry.
Lord Liverpool was excoriated along with his government in the popular press, but the Duke of Wellington, still nominal army commander, was criticized as well, and in scorn for him, the event became known as "the Peterloo Massacre." This was the most publicly prominent of a series of events which eventually lead to the first Reform Act (1832)/
It was during the journalistic debates which took place after the Peterloo Massacre and during the debates over the Reform Act that the terms "liberal" and "conservative" first appeared in print. The members of Parliament were still formally knowm, and referred to themselves, as Whigs and Tories. Economic policy formed no part of the derivation of those terms. If you don't know what you are talking about, O'George, you should have the decency not to make things up. Here's another example:
Quote:At one point in the transformation of Russia and the former Soviet Union it was the Bolshevics who were the "Conservatives".
I recommend to you John Reed's
Ten Days that Shook the World, which lists at the beginning, among the
dramatis personae the political parties in the Provisional Government formed by Lvov, and taken over shortly afterward by Kerensky. That was the government which the Bolsehvik Revolution overthrew. By self-definition, none of the parties was conservative. The Cadets (The Constitutional Democratic Party) came the closest to being a conservative party. Originally formed from liberal aristocrats who were critical of the government of Nicholas II, when the Soldiers and Sailors Soviet formed (soviet simply means committee), and then was replaced by the Petrograd Soviet, the Cadets represented a rather sour "loyal opposition." They were increasingly eclipsed by the self-proclaimed socialists of the other parties in the Provisional Government, and became conservative in comparison. During the October Revolution of the Bolsheviks, the Cadets were their staunchest opponents.
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