Builder wrote:Setanta wrote:Builder wrote:I don't think you need to establish a connection with any political bent to know that the current occupation of Iraq is a dangerous farce.
This sort of exercise only entertains the conservative American war-mongers if they can identify those with whom they disagree in belittling terms. To an American conservative, the term "liberal" is synonymous with pantywaist, coward, appeaser, traitor, homosexual--you name it, it can't be too debased a term if you are describing "liberals."
Strange really, considering that the word "liberal" relates to none of those issues.
I've wondered why Americans choose to hogtie words, and claim them as their own.
The word "liberal" is at the very heart of the American constitution, and libertarianism is the body and soul of the constitution. No wonder the shrubbite called it "just a goddamned piece of paper.
To be liberal-minded, simply means that you are open to all options.
What is so difficult to fathom with that statement?
I have written this before at this forum, and at others. Words were "hog-tied" (good word image) because of the militancy of the late 1960s. Black militants (as well as many, many other blacks, who cannot reasonably be seen as militant) identified the Vietnam War (and the Space Program) as distractions in the national attention, and drains on the national budget, which prevented effective government action to get at the roots of endemic racial inequality.
American Indian activists took a similar line, and soon, because of the unifying character of opposition to the war, many militants who were opposed to the war, as well as militants with other agendas, became allies, and therefore the concept of "politically correct" speech arose. You can't oppose the war and still talk about "n*ggers," because Blacks are now your allies in opposition to the war. You can't take militant action against gender discrimination, and casually accept a stereotype of all Indians as drunks--because you are going to want to improve conditions for Amerindian women as well as all other women.
Political rectitude, therefore, has understandable roots--but it can very easily go overboard, because people become reluctant to criticize for valid reasons (for example, acknowledging that alcoholism
is a serious problem for Amerindians). It is not only the left which has this problem, either, words became weapons for the right, as well.
So, for example, in the United States those who call themselves libertarians probably identify more with conservative political ideas than with "liberal" political ideas, and would be offended that you have identified "liberalism" with "libertarianism."
After riding high with Republicans in the White House from 1980 to 1992, which made them powerful despite control of the Congress by Democrats, conservatives began a concerted program to ideologically "capture" the American public. Liberal became a dirty word. People who receive public assistance are to be automatically identified as "welfare cheaters," people who oppose military expenditure or military adventures are "unpatriotic."
This is not to say that one side or the other is any better or worse than the other with these matters. Republicans (usually conservative) rant on about moral values, and look pretty bad when a Republican Congressman is found stalking an adolescent boy. Democrats (usually liberal) rant about solidarity with the poor and the working class, and then live life styles which make them easy targets for the sneer "limousine liberals."
I can't say if language is hostage to ideology in the Antipodes, although i suspect it would be, and that it is easier for you to see it among us than within your own society.
However you slice it, though, the author of this thread used the term liberal contemptuously, and was attempting to inferentially suggest that only liberals criticize the management of the war, and that because they are unpatriotic or cowardly. The implications are encoded in the word "liberal" as it is used by American conservatives all too often.
