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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (47394)	1/30/2008 10:20:13 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541964

Parts of that definition apply to classical liberal ideas, parts are unpolitical, parts can be found in any part of the political spectrum that has any significant support in today's America. Most of the definitions aren't political. And the different definitions don't really add up to one coherent whole, you could just as easily use different words for each one. Liberal is a word with many different meanings. Most of them are not in conflict with being conservative, for example you won't find many conservatives in the US who support rule by aristocracies and monarchies, and conservatives support freedom and charity at least as much as the people usually called liberals in the US today. If Lincoln is a liberal which definition out of your 15 does he fit? Usually when you say someone's a liberal in America today, you mean liberal as in the phrase "liberal Democrat". That's still a very broad meaning, but its not the same as the dictionary definition you provide except possibly #2 and then you've just moves the ambiguity about "liberal" to ambiguity about "progressive", or maybe #3 but its a circular definition.