If left is a term that “goes back centuries”, then I don’t know what it means anymore. In the 18th century it was the group that sat on the other side of the room from the royalists.
Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base.
This can be contrasted with liberalism, which is the belief in a core platform of liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law. Though liberalism is often conflated with leftism, it's not, and neither is it the opposite of conservatism.
Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They still are relevant, people just aren't really understanding the political philosophy.
> Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base.
This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government.
> Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless.
They are certainly approaching that point if people don't mean remotely the same thing when using them.
The left-wing perspective on "power to the people" often means the use of state power on behalf of people to counteract private sources of power (eg commercial power).
The right-wing perspective often means the removal of state power in favor of private (ie, "personal") source of power (often in the form of commercial entities).
> This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government.
I wouldn't describe these aspects of Republican messaging as their core platform. They're just conservative standards, all conservatives tend to imagine themselves this way. Rugged individualists, callbacks to tradition, even "states rights", aren't particularly leftist in that they aren't calling for moving power anywhere, but rather keeping it where it is. You vote for Republicans if you like their messaging, it just so happens that how Republicans want to achieve these goals means the old white people are empowered to do things the old white way.
If you pierce through the dreck of the messaging, the platform's the same as any other conservative ideology. Law and order, another pillar of conservative rationale, is the name of an actual political party in Poland, guess what, they're actually the majority party.
There's just not that much special about American politics when you get right down to it. What's dangerous about it is that America has more money than the average European country, but our society is far less well-educated on humanities subjects. If you think that makes us prone to misinformation and propaganda, well, it does.
such concepts are not static across a population, nor through time. beyond the author(s) and early adherents, the population itself has a separate conception of such ideas that can be markedly different from the initial conception, and that also changes through time. it's certainly useful to understand this sort of history, but trying to stake a definition in time and defy the dynamism of these concepts is inherently political (e.g., originalism). sometimes that can be done deftly and sometimes hamfistedly.
in any case, the concepts can be relevant and meaningful and still not be useful as identity markers in any meaningful and relevant way. identification principally with a single school of thought is simply a mistake of rationality, and how we get unthinking tribalist extremism. it happens with any -ism: libertarianism, socialism, nihilism, capitalism, etc. the world works as a non-linear composition of all of these ideas and much more. not a single one can be considered "correct" in any meaningful sense.
They retain meaning across populations and through time. That's the whole point of philosophy. People's opinions on the matters change, but that doesn't change the matters.
Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly. Like a market, eventually the political landscape returns to rationality. At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism.
They don't get to rewrite the meanings of the words because they don't like the connotations. Many through history have used his playbook, and it all follows the same general arc.
> Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly.
Well...
Actually it has changed. Classical Liberalism[1] is primarily an economic belief system that advocates small, non-interventionist government. It evolved into Right-libertarianism in the 20th and 21st century.
"In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, neo-classical liberalism advocated social Darwinism. Right-libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism."
This odd positioning is most visible in Australia, where the conservative party is called "The Liberal party" after the mid-20th century view on this.
This is a long way from any modern understanding of Liberalism particularly within the US:
"Social liberalism, also known as left liberalism in Germany, modern liberalism in the United States[4] and new liberalism in the United Kingdom, is a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses a regulated market economy and the expansion of civil and political rights....
In the United States, the term social liberalism may sometimes refer to progressive stances on sociocultural issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage as opposed to social conservatism."[2]
All classical liberals are liberals, but not all liberals are classic liberals. Ditto for social liberals. When I defined liberalism, I outlined a core platform. There are many many many movements within liberalism that all share the same core platform. They have to.
You cannot have classical liberalism in a country that's not committed to the core liberal platform. A free market just doesn't work in a world where there's no equality of the law, no liberty, and no consent of the governed. If even one of these is missing, you really can't have classic liberalism either. A regime will invariably put their fingers on the scales of commerce.
Ditto for every single other political philosophy under the liberal banner. All of these things rest upon a belief in the population of those three bedrock principles.
This goes against any common, modern understanding of the plain unadorned term "liberal". For example, former (Republican) house speaker Paul Ryan has called himself a "classical liberal"[1]
I'd also note:
Core beliefs of classical liberals did not necessarily include democracy nor government by a majority vote by citizens[2]
I'm not sure why you're presenting this as an argument against me. Americans, by and large, are liberals, every last one of them. It's the ones ignorant of political philosophy who have turned it into a pejorative. Paul Ryan calling himself a classical liberal is him calling himself a liberal.
Allow me to restate. Liberalism involves a core belief in consent of the governed, liberty, and equality under the law. Classical liberalism is all of these things. They just believe certain aspects are more important than others.
Some American conservative might decide economic freedom (liberty) is the most important aspect of liberalism. That's fine, that's all well and good, under the banner of liberalism. If you suddenly took away this conservative's consent of the governed, or made someone unequal according to the law, they would object, assuming they're a true liberal, which they are, because these values are steeped into just about every American. Solve problems through the political process, not by subverting it. Very, very core America.
What's dangerous about Trump is he's seducing people away from liberalism and towards royalism. Royals are above the law and get to impose governance on the people regardless of their consent. Not even the British agree that the royal family can govern without the consent of the populace, they had many many civil battles eventually deciding the role of the monarchy. Trumpists imagine these things are true even though they're not. They want a monarchy which is above the rule of law. They decide what is true and nobody can use legal action to decide otherwise.
Liberalism is a core Anglo doctrine, every single citizen of Anglo countries is a liberal, and many Europeans as well. They may campaign on other platforms, but if the core liberal pillars of society are threatened, Americans will revert back to those pillars.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but conservatives were fine with Trump's shenanigans, up to a point. That point is essentially, where Trump started threatening core liberal institutions. Once that started happening, the establishment started backing away. Only once Trump waved his hands again after the insurrection, saying it was all for fun, all a show, "be peaceful", did they start to line up again. Trump understood that he had to thread a needle between his base and core America. He failed, because Americans aren't going to go along with a clear subversion of democracy. He thought they could be convinced to and was wrong. Republicans wanted, and still want, his political vitality, but not his tactics.
Conservatives went along with him until he really threatened to make free and fair elections a thing of the past. I'm not saying that the American right is good people, I'm saying that the core beliefs of liberalism are inherent in all of us. There has long long been a fascination with royalism, like every single other democratic nation, but when push comes to shove, those who have tasted Anglo popular sovereignty will choose to continue popular sovereignty. Royalists will always be the minority.
yah, that's a political (and politicized) assertion. you also don't get to define terms only to your convenience, without consideration for the long arc of history and the breadth of the world's imagination.
> "At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism."
impulsive statements like this reveal the limitations of that kind of rigid thinking. trump isn't a fascist, he's a self-centrist. he's one of the simplest human beings to understand because of this. politicized projections such as yours are overfitted at best, and completely unfitted in most cases, as in this case.
Those are the very same thing. A fascist does not care about anything other than personal power. All philosophies and ideology are superfluous. Fascists run on the very basic political premise of "you like me, elect me and let me run things because you like me and you'll like what I want to do." That's the core message, anything else is pointless to understanding. That's what fascism is. I'm not misunderstanding Trumpism, I'm giving it the same name everybody else who understands political history and theory gives it.
Everything people like about Trump, are the same things that cause people to put fascists in power. Have a look at this explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8
Fascism isn't some long slow slide down to Nazi Germany that Americans seem to think of when they consider the term. The Nazis are the most visible and publicly know version of fascism, but countless others throughout history, in Europe, Latin America, Africa, have managed to subvert the mechanisms of their republics using the tactics of populism to put themselves in power, unaccountable to any sort of checks.
How is liberalism not the opposite of conservatism? Conservatives wish to maintain the status quo, true? Liberals wish to change it....
Liberalism has had a horrendous crash lately, many internal contradictions and fallacies have become clear, but the I still adhere to those principals.
You're thinking of progressivism, not liberalism. The American right has turned "liberalism" into a pejorative despite mostly being liberal themselves. (Trump supporters aren't liberal, hard to be liberal when you support fascism)
The only two terms that are really opposites here are 'left' and 'right', because they literally mean which side of the aisle you're sitting on. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the extremes of both sides are going to line up around who belongs in power, the elites, or in publicly accountable institutions.
It’s been basically “power to the individuals” (one person, one vote, this sort of things), as opposed to “power to the elite” (long live the kings etc) since the beginning. The elite makes do without a king, but the aristocratic class reflex is still there.
This spectrum is limited and one-dimensional, but it still is meaningful. The people who claim it isn’t are usually con men after your vote. “The third way” always turned out to be a scam.
I think you’re overfitting history with your current perspective. It’s so limiting, and mostly a recent phenomenon, to look at the past and politics as just “deciding where the power goes”. Most humans even in the US today don’t care except in how it affects their lives. Peasants likely didn’t care who the king was, or had some deep desire to rule themselves, many were just concerned with crop yields, protecting their family, enjoying life, and so on. Colonists in the US barely cared that they were ruled by a king, at least until they got hit with burdensome taxes.
Politics isn’t about power except secondarily, it’s about determining ones way of life. I don’t think anyone would care if they were ruled by a dictator, as long as that dictator didn’t interfere with how they live their life.
This is important because it seems like you walk away with the idea that conservatives are always about concentrating power and progressives are all about diffusing it. That’s just incorrect. Both have different ways they want to live their life and their policies are a reflection of attempts to change the environment around them to fulfill that vision. If progressive policy didn’t affect conservatives way of life, conservatives wouldn’t care about progressives. The reverse is true.
This framework fits every instance in history and everywhere on Earth for why politics happen: because people want to live their envisioned life.
