What the heck are liberal values?

[GordonH]

Liberals believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all. It is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual and human rights. Believe the role of the government should be to guarantee that no one is in need.


Conservatives believe in personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, individual liberty, traditional American values and a strong national defense. Believe the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals.

Both sound reasonable, it's unfortunate both appear to want to stick there noses into their own citizens business even though in these definitions it says civil liberties and individual and human rights & freedom.

Of course the US is also the biggest busy body on this planet stick there big nose into everyone business. Maybe before you point out everyones else problem US, stay home & fix your own problems. Thank-you for your help in both WW, since then you have been nothing but pain in everyones ar
Causing more problems then solving any

I've always said I no a fan of politicians, in a democracy they are a necessary evil.

[jimmy4321]

Those are tidy definitions but an over simplification

[Ka-El]

Those are tidy definitions but an over simplification

Yes, so to expand on them a bit, liberalism believes that while our existing socioeconomic system is the most desirable of what is currently available and realistic, it does by its very design create both winners and losers and by its very nature creates disenfranchised and marginalized persons and groups. Recognizing this, Liberals (not to be confused with current partisan groups) would implement systems to improve opportunity and parity so that as many people as possible are able to participate further recognizing that everyone benefits by increased participation (interestingly, our most highly competitive professional sports leagues recognize this same condition and so have a draft where teams that finish last pick first). Conservatives (again not to be confused with current partisan groups), on the other hand, believe people only become disenfranchised and marginalized due to their own personal failings (that is the only explanation) and the best way to have them participate more is through more punitive measures. Welfare dependence, for example, could be addressed by simply turfing people to the streets where they will suddenly find job skills and work ethic and find employment.

The Liberal view is more of a proactive approach under the assumption investment spending in social issues (eg. education) will lead to future savings and returns on investment, while the Conservative approach is to wait and engage in reactive spending to address social problems (eg. crime) after the fact. Research has shown that reactive spending can cost as much as ten times more than proactive spending (eg. addiction treatment vs addiction punishment), but another thing about Conservatives is they don’t much like to pay attention to research.

[hobbyguy]

Not paying attention to research seems to follow along with both the far right and the far left. The fundamental reason is that in both cases the folks seem to lock onto an orthodoxy, and because research or measurements poke holes in said orthodoxy, they must be dismissed and/or discredited.

That is not a new problem. Even the likes of Darwin had great difficulty in reconciling the facts he uncovered with the orthodoxies he believed in. His wife even expressed concerns that they might not meet in heaven because of his new theories. Consequently, he did not publish for 20 years, and then only because two colleagues "let the cat out of the bag". Most are familiar with the Galileo story, which shows some of the darker side of those that benefit from and would defend orthodoxies.

[Ka-El]

Not paying attention to research seems to follow along with both the far right and the far left.

True that, although I would hardly classify a Liberal as far-left.

[rustled]

There are many that attack public institutions, and despite the fact that there is inefficiency (as there is within all institutions both public and private), constantly try to create the meme that public institutions are less efficient than private ones. Often those arguments, if you trace them back, emanate from profiteers who see the public domain as an opportunity for themselves to pick the pockets of the average citizen....

Either way, for liberal democracy to work, the voter needs to cast aside partisanship and look at the facts.

This response to my post simply emphasizes to me how easy it is for us to collectively take our eye off the ball with "arguing" and become complacent about government bloat. Instead of considering the need to streamline before raising taxes (and before creating new and equally wasteful systems) you respond as though I'd made an "either-or" "public-private" argument.

I've previously pointed out how profiteers routinely use people's good intentions for their own ends, how we very much need a balance of liberal idealism and conservative pragmatism.

Instead of defending what I'm not attacking, perhaps take a moment consider how taxpayer complacency gets in the way of effective delivery of service. Perhaps we can talk about how we might reduce the effects of this taxpayer complacency, since it's now become second nature to ask our governments to expand social services.

Liberal values suggest the government should do more. Conservative values suggest they should be as efficient as possible in their delivery. Surely this doesn't mean there has to be an argument, surely there's a sensible middle ground.

[hobbyguy]

Don't confuse Liberal with liberal. Liberal (large L) is a political construct. Small L liberal is a world view that measures and evaluates based on measures (although at times the measures can flawed) and is embracing of changes.

The same is true of Conservative and conservative.

I would suggest that everyone is a mixture of both, more along the lines of keeping what is good and effective, and getting rid of what is bad, and at the same time making our society better. Perhaps the best example of that is democracy itself, which I would suggest that conservatives and liberals both wish to preserve (conserve).

I used the example of public vs private healthcare to illustrate precisely that there is much less "bloat" (see the administrative cost figures) in our public systems than critics would suggest. Yes indeed, one needs to keep a sharp eye on such things as "bloat" (such as a Conservative government spending $1 billion on a spy palace, or a Liberal government blows a bundle on used submarines).

However, those are neither liberal nor conservative in the world view sense. We get muddled because political parties (such as the Reform and Alliance party co-opting "conservative" and naming their party "Conservative", or the Reformers, Grits and Parti Rouge co-opting "liberal" and naming their party "Liberal") construct agendas that try to bring those world views to them.

Pragmatism is not limited to conservatives. Progressive ideas are not limited to liberals.

By the way, the "small government" and notions of "government bloat" originated with the libertarian movement, and not within liberal or conservative thinking.

[rustled]

Sigh.

Well, apparently I have an awful lot to learn, starting with what all those words mean in their various contexts. Lots to learn about liberal values in this thread. Best I go back to just reading about them until I'm properly enlightened.

[hobbyguy]

Me too!

[averagejoe]

The Progressive Review

How to tell the difference between a progressive and a liberal

Progressives don't act like prudes, puritans and prigs.

Progressives recognize the Green Party and its members as part of a broad coalition. Most liberals act as though Greens were a new kind of HIV.

Progressives try to convince people with whom they disagree, not just scold them.

http://prorev.com/proglib.htm

[Ka-El]

Justice. Justice is always a good one (injustice and tyranny something our ancestors came here to escape).

Obama commutes 330 drug sentences on last day as president

WASHINGTON - In a last major act as president, Barack Obama cut short the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of drug crimes on Thursday, bringing his bid to correct what he's called a systematic injustice to a climactic close.

With his final offer of clemency, Obama brought his total number of commutations granted to 1,715, more than any other president in U.S. history, the White House said. During his presidency Obama ordered free 568 inmates who had been sentenced to life in prison.

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/oba ... id=SL5MDHP

[Hurtlander]

The Progressive Review

How to tell the difference between a progressive and a liberal

Progressives don't act like prudes, puritans and prigs.

Progressives recognize the Green Party and its members as part of a broad coalition. Most liberals act as though Greens were a new kind of HIV.

Progressives try to convince people with whom they disagree, not just scold them.

http://prorev.com/proglib.htm

Apparently many of the folks on this forum I've accused of being right-wing are actually liberals.

[hobbyguy]

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/

“By definition”, Maurice Cranston rightly points out, “a liberal is a man who believes in liberty”

"Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the nature of liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, the comprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one might wonder whether there is any point in talking of ‘liberalism’ at all. It is not, though, an unimportant or trivial thing that all these theories take liberty to be the grounding political value. Radical democrats assert the overriding value of equality, communitarians maintain that the demands of belongingness trump freedom, and conservatives complain that the liberal devotion to freedom undermines traditional values and virtues and so social order itself. Intramural disputes aside, liberals join in rejecting these conceptions of political right."

If you look at those divisions within liberalism, one can see the basics of the 3 way (largely) split in Canadian politics. But uniting us all is that fundamental belief in liberty. When they speak of political "right" I think they are speaking in the terms of the original liberalism that threw out kings who ruled by "divine right" and those whose political ideology would result in an analogy to monarchy (Theocracy (Iran), Dictatorship, or Communism (North Korea)).

Historically, if you want liberty you wind up at democracy. No other form of government has proven to be as good at maintaining liberty. Small L "liberal democracy" has proven to be the best at maintaining liberty, and arguably has been the only form of government that creates widespread liberty in the first place. It is, however, the most messy and expensive form of government.

http://www.prosperity.com/rankings

Here Canada ranks 2nd (to Luxembourg - which hardly counts) in "personal freedom". We must be doing something right.

[Ccrider]

Google's definition: "Open to new behaviour or opinions, and willing to discard traditional values."

I am a right leaning Liberal, open to new behaviour and opinions, but not so willing to discard traditional values. Since Justine Trudeau became their leader, the ideology of the Federal Liberal Party has drifted so far to the left, that I am now more aligned with the ideology of the Progressive Conservative Party.

Another definition; "liberals are tolerant of the ideas and behaviours of others." In today's Canada, if a Justine Trudeau (Federal Liberal) follower discovers that you are of a different opinion, you are labelled as a fascist, a bigot, or any number of other derogatory terms. They have claimed exclusive ownership of the moral high ground, and what anyone else believes is wrong is completely irrelevant.

[hobbyguy]

One of the problems we always encounter is that within many worldview perspectives there is a tendency to want impose an individual's or group's worldview. Often well meaning, that tendency can become a burden to and antithetical to liberty.

We see this in the theocratic impulse that many organized religions display. It shows in terms being used like "heathen", "infidel", "pagan" and notions like "we are the chosen ones". Thus characterizing others as lesser in some way, and justifying the imposition of the orthodoxy of whatever organized religion chooses to use such terms.