Probably for a large number of people socialism=Marxism.
I don’t want to explore here about whether it really is or not, or whether we think that it is a good thing. But it bears mentioning that many people associate Marxism with horrors. Certainly the older generation in my family does. I think that is the reason for the switch to “progressive”. People like progress. It reminds them of the space program and the polio vaccine. Of course, so many things are given disingenuous names these days. All those super PACs with names like “The Center for Progress and Happiness”, and laws named to disguise their intent, like the “USA Patriot act”.
I have never liked political labels, because it assumes that one holds to a whole array of views. Some of them seem very contradictory to me.
While we’re poking at labels, that one drives me absolutely crazy. There is nothing conservative about attempting to reverse a century’s worth of social change.
I wish that folks would call them what they are: theocratic bigots.
I agree. The better, but less immediately grasped term, might be “social preservatives” – as in “wanting to preserve things in amber sometime around their golden age of 1896”
Of course, you’re right. Historically, the Tories’ record on LGBT rights is fucking appalling, There is no doubt that Cameron carried a good part of his party to this kicking and screaming and, as @strokeybeard pointed out, there is no way he’d have managed it without the support of the Lib Dems.
I was just using him as an illustration of @anon61221983’s point: that there are people who could be described as progressive in some senses, but who will not go out of the way to stop you starving in the streets if that’s what the markets dictate – in the name of liberty, of course. Also see The Economist, a bastion of free-market capitalism that called for the legalisation of same-sex marriage on its front cover in 1996.
The cynic in me wonders if this is perhaps because supporting gay marriage allows one to look a bit progressive while not actually costing much (a few minor bureaucratic changes, forms and suchlike), unlike, say, investing in schools or health, or cracking down on corporate malfeasance.
The overwhelming theme of global politics over the last fifty years is that the left has made slow and painful progress on those issues in which the wealthy have no unified interest, and lost catastrophically everywhere else.
Yeah, but honestly, everything in the 19th and early 20th century was “not free from racism and sexism”. And, at least in Europe, some of the “progressive” parties are still not free from racism or sexism.
I personally use the term “more of a progressive” from time to time to describe my political views. And sometimes I tell people my political views are rooted in science, reason, and humanism (which ends up being a cross-section of modern socialism, progressivism, and green party politics). After that mouthful people usually shrug and walk away.
Over here in the UK, saying you are, “Going out to smoke a fag.” means you are popping out to take a nicotine break rather than indulging in homophobic gun violence.
The left one is a Kölsch-Stange, and the vast majority of Germans would make fun of it as a uterine sample holder.
I, for one, agree with you. That’s a fine beer glass. (However, Früh is not really my taste.) But I would rather define a beet glass by it’s content than by size and form.
Wine glasses, however, are a very different story. They really shape the experience.
But how exactly did we end up with beer when discussing the liberal label as quite useless? Anyway, I grew up with “liberals” like Otto Graf Lambsdorff, and later realised that Burkhard Hirsch and Sabine Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger are from the same party.
When someone uses the term in the US-American sense, I always chuckle internally.
Liberalism is a very wide and open field, encompassing humanist traditions as well as free-market ideology. It’s no use to confound the different meanings in different context. But I would suggest to be liberal about the meaning as well as about the definition about beer glasses.
May someone be conservatively progressive in their liberal views of, a.g., same-sex marriage, but progressively conservative in their views of, e.g., environmental and customer protection where you come from?
-here, we call this “the Greens”, and think of them, increasingly, as an environmentally friendly conservative party. Which is interesting, regarding that they started as a true leftist project outside of parliament. But they changed the political discourse so much that even parts of the conservative party now voted in favour of same-sex marriage, just last week.
To be picky, the original Tory party – the one suspected, sometimes with cause, of Jacobite sympathies – was defunct by 1760. The Conservatives started as Pitt the Younger’s wing of the Whigs, and for a long time rejected the label “Tory”, which was originally applied to them by their opponents as a term of abuse: Pitt described himself as an “independent Whig”.
Just to confuse matters, the Liberal Party began as a fusion of the Whigs and Robert Peel’s wing of the Tories (which he had recently rebranded as the Conservatives). The anti-Peelites carried on under the Tory name before adopting the Conservative label themselves.
The Liberals themselves would later split on the question of Irish Home Rule, with one faction, the Liberal Unionists, ultimately merging with the Conservatives to form the Conservative and Unionist Party, which is still the Tories’ full official name.
The green party in my country is a true leftist party with a heavy lean on environmental protection. You do have parties that hold certain views that are often considered “progressive” while at the same time also holding views that are more conservative. For instance, most parties in my country support the idea of same-sex marriage regardless of whether they are a conservative party or a progressive party (only exception in this is the small group of Christian conservatives).
And the same is true in the other direction as well. The socialist party, for instance, has made a strong move into this weird leftist conservative corner, holding more progressive views on labor and unions, while at the same time holding very conservative views on immigration.
Which is why I usually don’t like to use single word descriptions to describe my political views. Because using them gives the impression that all liberals, or all conservatives, or all progressives should hold the same set of ideas and values.
1st the american “pint glass” was never meant or designed to drink out of. So they are unpleasant for that. 2nd they give the broad impression that you are drinking a pint of beer, or a measurable amount larger than a 12oz beer bottle. And as such are often sold at a premium (despite the lower unit cost of draft beer). When they aren’t. You are only getting 12-14oz of liquid beer. Its at base deceptive. They’re also harder to poor into properly, leading to flat beer with too much head or too little head. In a utilitarian sense they are a disaster apart from their durability and stackability.
Actually they don’t most of what we hear about wine glasses shaping the taste and experience of wine comes from Reidel Marketing materials first put out in the 70’s. Its one of the classic example of how you can buy “science” that says anything you want from marketing firms. Their central goal was to get people to buy more than 1 set of glasses.
A handful of things do have an effect. Narrow glasses preserve carbonation. And a thinner glass lip is interpreted by most people as more pleasant or classier.
Not sure. But it is another excellent example of a subject people demonize based on its popular perception. As driven by right wing claims. Without actually understanding or thinking about the details.
As for the liberal label this:
Is a surprisingly good run down of its root. And what it means in the broadest sense. I tend to think there is still utility there.
I really disagree that it’s only Riedel’s marketing. If you ever try a good Riesling from two different glasses, you will change your stance, I promise you that.
Also, a good Vino nobile de Montepulciano can be nearly ruined if you drink it from a white wine glass, or a cheap usual red wine glass.
If you have a nosing glass at home, and a tumbler, try a tawny port from both. Or go for a properly aged whisky.
Nuances, like Riedel at al. are using to sell their portfolio with, are harder to taste, and mostly sold to people who don’t know shit and can’t taste the difference between a1973 and a 1977.vintage anyway.
Enough OT: thanks for the Fall of the Eagles tip. I don’t think I will be able to see it soon, but out sounds like fun. The 1848 revolution was one of my better experiences in history classes, and I am quite aware how “liberal” was used back then in the various regions of central Europe. This is what I had in the back of my head when reading Cory’s moaning in the first place.
FTR, I suggest to have a look at how inmigrants from Europe changed the US in the aftermath. Carl Schurz springs to mind.
As the UK runs a “first past the post” electoral system, we don’t really have more than two viable political parties. In the mainland, anyone voting other than Conservative or Labour is pretty much wasting their vote.
I think it is a shame that we didn’t get proportional representation a few years back. It would have been nice to be able to vote with my conscience for my first choice and then use my second choice for my spoiler vote. As it is, I can either vote for the spoiler party (Labour in my case), or wake up the next day knowing that I actively assisted in electing another Tory government.
