Are all Liberal Democrats now called Socialist.?

Time to Call a Spade a Spade.

I get into a discussion almost on a daily basis here on SodaHead about the labels "Liberal" and "Conservative". The one thing that is apparent is there's a lot of confusion as to what each means. There are "fiscal conservatives" and "social liberals" and a hundred other hyphenated positions in between. There's even a test one can take that puts a little red dot on a grid to indicate where you stand as a liberal or conservative, statist or libertarian, based on ten questions with a "yes / no / maybe" response dealing with social and economic issues. The questions are worded in such a manner as to skew the results to show most in agreement with the sponsor's point of view (http://www.theadvocates.org/... if you care to take a look).

It's time to cut through the crap and get to the heart of the matter. Time is running out for America.
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The following is the best examination of the difference between "liberals" and "conservatives" I have ever seen. For me, it explains why compromise between the two is not possible and such a deep and unbridgeable gap exists between the two philosophies. It points out the misappropriation of the term "liberal" and the deceitful application of the term "conservative" to prevent those that do not desire an authoritarian, intrusive government from becoming united to resist the statists. Disparate and incompatible groups are lumped together with competing agendas while the "progressives" are trying to progress back to a paternalistic, authoritarian government upon which they can rely to take care of them.


"It is extremely convenient to have a label for the political and economic viewpoints elaborated in this book. The rightful and proper label is liberalism. Unfortunately, "As a supreme, if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate it's label"(1) so that liberalism has, in the United States, come to have a very different meaning than it did in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century or does today over much of the Continent of Europe.

As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported laissez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individual: it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In political matters, it supported the development of representative government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms of individuals.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, and especially after 1930 in the United States, the term liberalism came to be associated with a very different emphasis, particularly in economic policy. It came to be associated with a readiness to rely primarily on the state rather than on private voluntary arrangements to achieve objectives regarded as desirable. The catchwords became welfare and equality rather than freedom. The nineteenth century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth century (and twenty first century) liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequisites of or alternatives to freedom. In the name of welfare and equality, the twentieth century liberal has come to favor a revival of the very policies of state intervention and paternalism against which classical liberalism fought. In the very act of turning the clock back to seventeenth century mercantilism, he is fond of castigating true liberals as reactionary!

The change in the meaning attached to the term liberalism is more striking in economic matters than in political. The twentieth century liberal, like the nineteenth century liberal, favors parliamentary institutions, representative government, civil rights and so on, yet even in political matters, there is a notable difference. Jealous of liberty, and hence fearful of centralized power, whether in governmental or private hands, the nineteenth century liberal favored political decentralization. Committed to action and confident of the beneficence of power so long as it is in the hands of government ostensibly controlled by the electorate, the twentieth century liberal favors centralized government. He will resolve any doubt about where power should be located in favor of the state instead of the city, of the federal government instead of the state, and of a world organization instead of a national government.

Because of the corruption of the term liberalism, the views that formerly went under that name are now often labeled conservatism. But this is not a satisfactory alternative. The nineteenth century liberal was a radical, both in the etymological sense of going to the root of the matter, and in the political sense of favoring major changes in social institutions. So too must be his modern heir. We do not wish to conserve the state interventions that have interfered so greatly with our freedom, though, of course, we do wish to conserve those that have promoted it. Moreover, in practice, the term "Conservatism" has come to cover so wide a range of views, and views so incompatible with one another, that we shall no doubt see the growth of hyphenated designations, such as libertarian-conservative and aristocratic-conservative." (2)

(1) Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954) p. 394

(2) Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002) Introduction