Sweeping characterisation of college students as "liberals", especially in a thread where they're being accused of illiberalism.
It's the continuation of the US 'culture war'.
It's the continuation of the US 'culture war'.
But "liberal" has two meanings: It means the opposite of "illiberal", that is, in favor of human freedom. It also means "to the left on the political spectrum", which is a completely orthogonal meaning. (The political left can be as anti-freedom as the political right, and historically, I'm not sure which side has been "better".)
Whether or not you like it, both definitions of "liberal" are in common usage. If anything, the political usage is more common than the not-illiberal usage.
That means regarding it as "culture war" to call the college students "liberal" is... swimming against the tide? Trying to fight an unwinnable war? Not a good occasion for getting up in arms, at any rate.
It wasn't some grassroots movement, it was a conscious propaganda technique. "I never use the words Republicans and Democrats. It's liberals and Americans." - James G. Watt.
It'd be like if one day people started completely uncritically and unironically referring to "libertarians" as "authoritarians". Sure, it's human language and anything goes, but it wouldn't be any less pants-on-head idiotic.
Fun fact: the politically conservative party in Australia is called the Liberal Party.
You quote James Watt. That was 30 years ago.
This ship sailed a long time ago. You aren't going to change everyone else's usage here, no matter how hard to tilt against that windmill.
You may not believe that words have meanings, but I actually put value into semiotics and semantics.
OK, it's American slang. We're talking about an American college here, and I suspect that the majority of the people in the conversation are Americans. That means that you are the one insisting on using words in ways that are not the standard meaning.
Besides, you assume that everyone in the U.S. have the same understanding of the word "liberal". It's always good to have these terms discussed and clarified.
I believe (though I do not have the data to prove) that the majority of people on this site are in the U.S. (Not just in this conversation, on this site.) It therefore seems appropriate that U.S. definitions be accepted. (Other definitions should also be accepted/tolerated, of course, but the U.S. definitions should always be accepted - not because "it's the US!", but because those terms are used by the majority of the people here.)
vezzy-fnord has been complaining about the use of the U.S. term in this conversation. If he/she wants to say that the term may not be understood by others who are not in the U.S., that's fine. But vezzy-fnord's stance has been more that our use of the term is wrong. I disagree with that position - language is defined by usage, after all.
[Edit: I mean that the proper definition of a word on HN would be how that word is normally used by the majority of people on HN, not how it would be normally used by the majority of people in the world. Again, this is not intended to be saying that the U.S. definition is the only right one for HN - we should accept other peoples' usage as well. But telling the majority that their use of the term is incorrect... well, I think at best it's wasting a lot of peoples' time.]
> Besides, you assume that everyone in the U.S. have the same understanding of the word "liberal".
Thanks to our media's simple-minded casting of everything as "liberal vs. conservative", yes, pretty much everyone in the U.S. has that understanding. (Fewer people seem to have the understanding of "liberal" to mean "not illiberal, in favor of personal liberty". I wish it were otherwise.)
Which is, incidentally, a very liberal (using the American connotation of the word) thing to do.
I'm an Aussie. The Liberal party, despite its often illiberal stance recently, actually has a pretty broad church of opinion within the party.
The party is definitely conservative and largely push against changing the status quo, but actually there are a lot of different views within the party.
It was only recently that Tony Abbott prevented this free contest of ideas within the party room with his "Captain's picks" (a cricketing term where the captain of the team gets to pick team mates) and allowed his chief of staff to be a "gate keeper" between him and the party, which led to policy disagreements that festered within the Coalition (National Party - largely country people - and the Liberal Party) or otherwise known as the LNP. It was an utter disaster and eventually the party elected to boot him from the leadership position. This was despite the fact this happened in the Labor party twice already and they largely won an election because they campaigned on stability!
If you accept the dictionary definition of "liberal" as the acceptance of another person's viewpoint, then I'd consider the Liberal Party to be just that -"liberal". The Abbott years were an anomaly.
Ironically there are many times I've seen people from the U.S. argue the LNP are a libertarian party. They are most definitely NOT libertarians!
I don't like the Liberal Party because of their stance on climate change and asylum seekers. With Malcolm Turnbull in charge, their stance on climate change has changed but it will take some time to unravel the stupidity of the Abbott Government's policy decisions.
I'm hoping Turnbull will change or come up with a better asylum seeker policy. Right now, there is very little difference between the ALP and the LNP.
Your definition of liberal more closely matches the definition of "libertarianism".
> 1. favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.
> 2. (often initial capital letter) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform.
> 3. of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism, especially the freedom of the individual and governmental guarantees of individual rights and liberties.
> 4. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
> 5. favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.
> 6. of or relating to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
> 7. free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant: a liberal attitude toward foreigners.
So I'm not sure that I see a valid basis for your complaint.
FWIW, the GP didn't make a sweeping statement that all students were liberals, but that it was reported that student administration is largely composed of liberals.
Now that is a bit problematic, because a. It doesn't state where this is reported so it's hard to counter, and b. It doesn't define what is meant by the term "liberal"... But these are all things to ask for clarification on.
If we could ask for clarification in a respectful way (I'm guilty of not being respectful I'm afraid) these threads would be a lot more enlightening as the discourse would flow more freely and clearly.
In the US context there is very much a reason for this: the right is hostile to intellectualism per se, and occasionally hostile to non-pragmatic education itself.
discourse
It's rather rare that the people one is speaking to in a comments thread actually change views in it, especially to the extent that they start off using codeword language. It's more for the 'benefit' of bystanders. And a bit of good old fashioned point-scoring.
Comments sections aren't solely for the benefit of the two people hashing out their views, but also for all those reading them.
The more I read that posters comments the more of a fan I become. Not because I agree, but because it makes me think. I honestly don't say that lightly.