I was asked yesterday which sort of Liberal I was a social Liberal or a orange book Liberal. My reply that I was a liberal was a little flippant really but also I believe the appropriate one.
It has to be said on this issue that the difference between the two types is much smaller than the media blew them up to be and so the question a littler irrelevant.
However, despite that I’m going to wade into the topic area, or actually use it as a reference point to another topic. What do we mean by a Liberal? I’m not going to get lost Ain liberal theory but briefly lay out the discourse around the word.
It seems today that everyone wants to be a liberal, David Cameron is the best example of this, but I’ve also been told by a Thatcherite that he is liberal while I was a socialist, as somebody rightly pointed out yesterday Thatcherism is economically liberal, not though socially. When considering whether or not the “liberal” Tories are liberal we should consider not just their conclusions but also the attitude that leads them there. This is where the big difference lies.
On a US forum titled “Liberal Forum” actually contained any one who felt alienated by the American political structure. There were members of the far right to a self confessed Stalinist, the guru of the group who played the role of explaining liberalism to American was a Labour Blairite.
Even I am guilty of clouding the word in a shroud my own blog name Liberal Leslie suggests all that spews from my fingers is liberalism, I am liberal and claim the monopoly of liberalism. A more suitable name might be Leslie’s Liberalism.
The effect of all these people claiming the name for all their political views is paradoxical. On the one hand the word begins to mean a lot more; liberal could be used to describe just about any policy if someone is going to claim the name. As the mouth piece of Liberalism that is Liberal Leslie I could tomorrow say that feudal system is liberal, this is clearly an exaggeration of the situation but the trend stands. Despite the word taking on more, it means less. Imagine it has having a set mass, a kg of the old liberal before this effect took place was the size of a equivalent bag old sugar, a kg of the new liberal is like oxygen, its everywhere, has no form or shape. The word liberal is perhaps loosing all its real meaning, its specifics, a liberal in one of the examples above is simply the belief in free markets not in real human freedom or social freedom.
Its not time to start writing obituaries for the word liberal, but I do think the crowding of the label is a issue. But to finish with a real conclusion I turn the wisdom enshrined in the dictionary of Liberal Quotations:
“A liberal is a man or woman or child,
who looks forward to a better day,
a more tranquil night
and
a bright and infinite future.”
Bernstein