@SheiffFatman specifically said that Cameron, not the Tories, had his resect. And specifically only for legalising gay marriage, not for any of his many other actions.
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Corey, I think you left a typo in your post -
"US political spectrum, whose mainstream ran from far-right to center-right,“
really ought to read more like
"US political spectrum, whose mainstream ran from far-right to batshit-insane racist theocrat,”
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The key is to separate out social liberalism. Once one focuses mainly on economic philosophy, Hillary Clinton suddenly looks a lot closer to Mitt Romney or Prince Bush (which isn’t saying much, since both those GOP candidates are essentially neoliberal radicals as well as social conservatives, but despite the existence of a gulf the perspective is changed).
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I’m a fan of “socialist” myself. Despite living in the U.S.
Funny how few “progressives” in the U.S. use socialist for themselves. Provincialism, perhaps.
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Of course. But for any society to work well, it needs rules.
And any society is also going to splinter into factions. We’re simply not mere free-floating individuals. Even those who emphasize individualism are subscribing to an ideology, especially in the U.S.
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Okay, so it seems that it’s only taken 25 years after the cold war for labels slightly to the left of “liberal” to start to detoxify in American political discourse. That’s probably a good thing, because unless we have the terminology to talk about a wide range of political views, we we’ll be less likely to express those views or put them into action.
It’s good to have this terminology because as we’ve found in this thread, the word “liberal” has encompassed many different views over time, which could place you all over today’s political map.
You’ve had, over history:
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Classical Liberalism- The 19th century version of the word. Pro free trade, Rule of law, political liberty and laissez faire economics
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Social Liberalism- Following on from that, social liberalism softened the edges of the previous school a bit, arguing for limited social provisions- pensions, unemployment insurance and so on. A generous person would say that this was in response to concern about the extremes of deprivation and wealth produced by Victorian-era society, Cynics would say that it was aimed at heading off the prospect of revolution.
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New Liberalism- This was the post 1930s New-deal consensus that accepted democratic intervention in the economy and the provision of social welfare. This is where the current US use of the term is stuck.
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Neo-Liberalism- We kind of come full circle with the hair splitting triangulation of the 80s and 90s- Embrace financialised capitalism, cut back social provision, and leave the difference between “conservative” and “liberal” to narrow into a few cultural wedge issues.
Back on the topic of labels ,it seems that politics today is fragmenting beyond the spectrum of labels that we have at our disposal. Heck, it’s even moving beyond the political compass. You can locate a lot of positions on the left-right, Individualism - Authoritarian plane, but there are a lot of issues that lie orthogonal to it.Secularism vs Fundamentalism, Regionalism vs Globalism, Individualism vs Group Identity, are all major political splits in places, but could lie at the same point on the plane.
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You can thank the Lib Dems for that one, it was Lynne Featherstone who introduced it. Cameron may have backed it but he’d never have gotten it past his party. Typical of a tory to claim the glory once it turned out to be popular, though.
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The liberal allows progress as long as it does not interfere with profit margins.
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As opposed to “The conservative,” who only wants to move society backward in time while still making a profit?
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As an American who uses “liberal” as a shorthand for identifying myself, I’d put it this way: The liberal allows progress as long as it does not interfere with reasonable and sustainable profit margins.* This allows for a lot of social progress and economic and social mobility in a prosperous society.
Modern American conservatives, on the other hand, do not allow any social progress while pursuing policies that promote greedy and (in the long term) unsustainable profit margins – the former is used to distract from the latter.
[* Clinton, who pushes a Third Way neoliberal-lite economic programme, does not meet that criterion – she’s buying an extra decade at best before the reckoning comes]
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If you ain’t got Mojo Nixon, your store could use some fixin!
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Also, it’s helpful to remember that the American progressive movement in the 19th and early 20th century wasn’t always free from racism and sexism, either. There were quite a few southern progressives that fully supported segregation and thought it was beneficial to keep the races apart.
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Added to this, the concept of marriage equality as the singular bellwether of gay rights is in and of itself problematic, because it’s basically about making queer people fit into the mold of straight life. And as you rightly point out, it ignores trans people as a matter of course.
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We don’t really do that though and I think we have very good reasons for NOT doing it. Social issues still matter and intersect with issues of class. That’s the bind we’re in, that we have people all over the map on a number of issues, and we have no way to pin down everyone on those issues. As @lolipop_jones, his own political views puts him at odds with lots of different people.
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Maybe, but I do think that several decades of that word being associated with the Soviet Union (who was our supposed existential enemy) has more to do with that than anything else… the purse of leftists in the 50s didn’t help.
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New deal liberals didn’t look too kindly on monopolies.
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I think I’m starting to see a pattern. Clearly, we need to abolish profits! 
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Yep. Like I said, provincialism. 
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Our existential army is… uh… well heck it looks like we’re the ones we’re waiting for. Dangit.
Feeling tired already. Been at this for a while now. Long way to go.
Joke:
What’s a progressive?
A radical with kids!
Making another pot of coffee. Tea. Etc… come on by y’all if you’re ever in Austin.
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