I'm a paid up member of the Conservative and Unionist Party (£2 a week subs). What are you? What's trivial is insisting on calling someone "Tommo" and then getting your knickers in a twist when called out about it. Liberal? What's this obsession about David Steel and Jeremy Thorpe all about? Or do you mean "Liberal" in the American political context, meaning you are either an American who has been lecturing me about British Law, or you are a self-loathing Brit who has been infected with Americanisms, effectively abandoning his own political culture. With added attention deficit disorder. Here's the thing about how disabused the term "liberal" has become. To be a liberal means to espouse a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law. People like John Locke and Adam Smith championed classical liberalism. On that basis, it has a pretty broad meaning in terms of the British political landscape. Maggie Thatcher was brought up in a Liberal household, but created, under the guidance of Keith Joseph, a philosophy some call liberal conservatism, because she blended free-market economic policies with traditional social conservatism. But clearly, "liberal" could be applied across the British political spectrum, because of shared values. Even Labour is in favour of individualism, an Englishman's right to their castle and equality. It was the Americans in the 1930s who twisted the language. Americans thought to be Liberal was to mean being open minded (perhaps it is). Roosevelt was the one who thought to be "open minded" was to mean policies of economic interventionalism and redistribution of wealth. But even then, his American definition of liberalism was embraced across the political spectrum, because American liberalism became known for "generosity of spirit and expansion of individual freedom" or using the capacity of the state "to ensure individual freedom for the maximum number of people". Herbert Hoover didn't concede the word to his political opponents. The Yankees really ruined the word in the 1960s following the killing of Kennedy, when Buckley started using the term purely to describe his political opponents, followed by Nixon and Agnew. None of whom have <deleted> all to do with Britain. The schism started because of something that never existed in the UK. In the UK, there might have been lots of things that might have denied you the vote, such as poverty, gender, but race was never a factor. Slavery was never a legal institution in the UK. But it was in the US; liberalism, or this idea of getting freedom for the maximum number of people didn't seem to extend to everyone. So the term liberals began to be associated with the white liberal people attending civil rights marches, which were divisive. Effectively the term "Liberal" in America lost all meaning in the 1970s, as it became used by a part of the American establishment that was hostile to civil rights reform, to describe anyone who disagreed with them. So it is absolutely fecking ridiculous for a Brit to start to start using such terms, unless they are of the ilk of another imported foreign political mantra, fascism, and its British version, Mosleyitism, where at its core, it believes not all people should have the same rights, a profoundly non-British sentiment. England established common rights at Runnymede. Nominally, Americans adopted such rights as well, but it went tits up the moment they were walking down a street in their own country, and started regarding human beings shuffling naked in chains as mere property. I'm pretty sure you are not in favour of legalisation of slavery, so quit with the Americanisation of our political landscape. The Americans have enough of their own problems without adding them to ours. Of course, maybe you are an American who believes all that stuff and you have spent the week bullsh itting your way through British maritime law, to interfere with the world. Because that's what Americans like to do. Interfere in the world, and impose their beliefs, schisms, insecurities on everyone else. American people individually are great, but are complete ar seholes collectively. If you don't like reading all this, that's ok. There is something you can do to avoid it. Now it is quite a British trait to send one to Coventry. Use, and you will never hear from me again. I could be replying, but you'd be in blissful ignorance, and perhaps feeling happier in your life.
Create an account or sign in to comment