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Unpopular opinion on HN, but people are mostly liberals when the current system works for them and it's even more visible as observe the political spectrum outside the US. It's easier to say "the market solves everything" when it works for you. When it does not work for them, they turn either to the right or the left side. As the current system is mostly falling apart for the middle class, you then have a raising far-left and far-right as a consequence. That's also why the vast majority of rich people are liberals.

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You're thinking of what "liberal" means in most of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism

But the article talks about a different kind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_State...

Oh interesting, I'm indeed French and it's interesting to see that it does not mean the same thing, I've misinterpreted parts of the article then. Actually, even on wikipedia, the content between the same pages is completely different, interesting to see !

Liberal basically means the opposite of what it used to mean in the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

"Liberal" means exactly what it always meant: there have always been different strains of liberalism. It's just the conservatives and libertarians who are picky about what they call themselves, defining themselves in opposition.

What do you think Liberal means? In the UK, as well as in the USA, it generally doesn't mean "the market solves everything" (You might be thinking of Libertarianism[1]).

The article explicitly references redistributive economic views, quite the reverse of the market-centric view you attach to the label.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

In Aus the right wing party is the Liberal party.

Mapping Australian politics to the USA is crazy. All sides end up being really left in comparison. Even sanders views on guns are right wing in Australia.

Generally, when people say "liberal" in Europe they mean "economically liberal", while people mean "socially liberal" in the US.

I've always used 'liberal' in the socially liberal sense (I'm from the UK).

Here we tend to use 'neo-liberal' to describe the laissez-faire attitude towards economics.

If so, the UK is different from mainland Europe in this regard.

I do find it peculiar, though, that "neo-liberalism" is of a different form than "liberalism", and hence not really "new liberalism":P

If anything, it's very old Liberalism.

Way back when, (Whigs and Tories era), the "Liberals" we're the ones arguing for free markets as opposed to Feudalism. This is where attachment of the word "Liberal" to free market-ists originates, I think.

In the UK, "the liberals" (a.k.a The Liberal Democrats) are "social liberals" (indeed, we usually claim to be the largest Social Liberal party in Europe.)

In the rest of Europe, it does tend to break down in the way you describe. In 2009 (not sure if still the case), Denmark had a centre-right party called Venstre in government ("The Liberal Party"), and a much smaller party Radikal Venstre in opposition ("The Social Liberal Party"). This pattern (with or without the smaller one) tends to be the pattern in most of Europe I believe.

However, the article is discussing US Politics, so that is where the confusion arises.

I would like to argue that the {Liberal => Social liberal} mapping comes from JS Mill in the UK in the late 1800s, but I'm sure it originates before then.

Note also that the Lib Dems, a merger of the Liberal Party and the SDP, were not right wingers (Liberals) and left wingers (Social Democrat Party) merging, they were a historical Social Liberal party (Lib) merging with a relatively right wing spin off from Labour (SDP).

What you describe is conservatism, not liberalism.

Edit: downvotes? really?

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