Are you liberal? paleocon? Brief history of terms

[hawks4ronpaul]

Would it help people to "sticky" this post?


18th Century England: Conservative = monarchist big gov./feudalism/temporal powers of church: Liberal = small gov./limited gov./free market/individual rights, source of phrase "liberal democracy" (small limited gov. democracy) and liberalized trade (free trade) and European "liberal" parties refer to small-gov. history (if not always to current policy).

American Founders = liberal (original meaning), so, unlike Europe, America started liberal (no feudalism). Historians who say Founders were conservative refer to conserving 18th-Century English liberalism after Britain ended Salutary Neglect (deregulation/small gov.) to increase centralization/regulation/taxation on the colonies.

20th-Century American leftists/socialists perverted popular term liberal into liberal = big gov./unfree markets/centralization so old liberals (small gov.) switched to term conservative as in conserving original liberalism.

Modern confusion leads small-gov. folks to terms such as "neoliberal" or "classically liberal" or "libertarian" or now "paleoconservative" to distinguish from neocons who are more like 18th-Century European conservatives.

Meanwhile, the 20th-Century American "liberals" (big gov.) such as Hillary now call themselves "progressive" so they can ruin that term too.

Confusing, isn't it?

http://hawks4ronpaul.blogspot.com/

[nist7]

yeesh......

[rfbz]

Weird how things get all twisted around like that over time. One thing I've noticed is how easily an issue gets ingrained into a party. If something happens under a democratic (or republican's) president's watch that he has to respond to, his party backs him, the other party opposes, and before you know it that party has picked up a stance on yet another issue that may not even jive at all with their philosophy. I've always wondered how republicans got so aligned with religion. You'd think the smaller government party would distance themselves from that as much as possible.

[MS0453]

Weird how things get all twisted around like that over time. One thing I've noticed is how easily an issue gets ingrained into a party. If something happens under a democratic (or republican's) president's watch that he has to respond to, his party backs him, the other party opposes, and before you know it that party has picked up a stance on yet another issue that may not even jive at all with their philosophy. I've always wondered how republicans got so aligned with religion. You'd think the smaller government party would distance themselves from that as much as possible.


That's because the paleo-con movement isn't a pure jeffersonian movement. It's got plenty of purtianism ingrained in it as well.

It's why a guy like Mencken could be considered part of the old right, but not a paleo-con.

[Richandler]

I am a Richandlerist and nothing more.

[Dave Pedersen]

Evil always grasps noble names for itself. No wonder Christianity is so corrupted. It amazes me a-theists cannot understand that mainstream Christianity is no more Christianity than a neo-con is a small government free market person.

We should dump both the name liberal and conservative and all their derivatives and say what we mean by referring directly to the size and role of government preferred. It would be difficult for the pretenders to co-opt small government but then who was it who said "The era of big government is over."?

The federalists also absconded the rightful name of the confederalists who wanted a loose confederacy as opposed to a strong centralist form for the United States and so the anti-federalists were born out of sheer necessity. Their name was stolen by the centralists and so what could they call themselves but a negative version of what they once were? Names are important for they serve to define for those who will not learn. Those who will only learn grudgingly are ever the majority.

[JosephTheLibertarian]

pity.. I'd be a liberal if the leftists hadn't hijacked it.

[hawks4ronpaul]

Yes, and even Jefferson was not always "Jeffersonian."

Yes, the federalists were the big-gov. crowd (relatively speaking within the narrow American spectrum of the time), although I think the name is fair in a federalist v. confederalist debate but the confederalists lost historically by getting tagged anti-federalist rather than pro-liberty.

The greatest irony is that today people like Ron Paul get tagged as extremist anarchist for wanting to return to America's 18th-Century big-gov., because today's "mainstream" (but actually extremist?) gov. is so enormous that today's "moderates" see the Founders' big gov. as anarchy.

http://hawks4ronpaul.blogspot.com/