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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (184836)	3/15/2004 10:17:01 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572900

Liberal is indeed associate with all of those things in modern American politics. It used to (and in some contexts still does) mean supporting a high degree of freedom. It is also associated with moving away from old ideas. If you try to apply everything the world is associated with in any context you get the same word with totally opposite meanings. For example modern American liberals tend to push for more government spending and regulation, which is directly opposed to liberal defined as a supporter or minimal government interference in peoples lives and the economy. Liberal can mean everything from socialist to libertarian, but it is most often used in America today to describe ideas that are closer to socialist then they are to minarchist. Tim

To: Road Walker who wrote (184836)	3/16/2004 1:42:42 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572900

re: Liberal is most associated with welfare and entitlement programs and with government spending and regulation and high or increasing taxes under a "progressive" tax structure. It is also associated with strong opposition to the "cultural/religious right", and with support for "multiculturalism", "alternative life styles" and having American foreign policy be highly respectful of, or even determined by the opinions of other countries and the UN. LOL, you understand liberal even less than you understand conservative John, I was going to say something about Tim's definition but then what was the point. So much of the definition is colored by his own biases. What's interesting about the definitions for both ideologies is that there are upsides and downsides to each one. For an example, conservatism encourages fiscal restraint and tends towards isolationism. Both can be positives to a degree. But then there is the downside.......where fiscal restraint becomes a refusal to spend to the point where growth is stifled and isolationism leads to xenophobia. Same with liberalism.....the belief in free markets and the protection of the civil rights of individuals and unrestricted progress. Free markets become bad when there are no restraints, resulting in monopolies and oligarchies develop. The protection of the civil rights of individuals is great until that protection infringes on other individuals. And progress can be an elixir until its at a pace that causes people to fall behind. So both ideologies have their virtues and their faults. ted