♦ nivek ♦ Posted September 18, 2008 Share Posted September 18, 2008 "An anarchist is an uncomprimising liberal."-- Émile Faguet (1847-1916) French writer and critic Source: Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvième siècle, Vol. 1 (Paris: Société Française d'Imprimerie et de Librairie, c. 1898), p. 226 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/...guet.Quote.6516 "A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he proposes to pay off with your money." -- G. Gordon Liddy (1930-) Attorney, FBI agent, politician, radio personality http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/G...iddy.Quote.4108 "It takes two wings to fly." -- Eric Schaub American writer, speaker, activist Source: essay, "Conservative Liberal or Liberal Conservative?" http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/E...haub.Quote.2BEC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Captain Posted September 18, 2008 Share Posted September 18, 2008 The definition sure did change. Paine and Jefferson were once called liberals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vomit Comet Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 The definition sure did change. Paine and Jefferson were once called liberals. No kidding. I guess towards the 20th century the term "liberal" in American politics came to describe "social liberalism" (civil rights, identity politics, etc.). And with the package came welfare state legislation a la LBJ. So the two got conflated. Liberalism originally meant what we would now call libertarianism. The rest of the world thinks we're weird. Well, to add to the picture... the old guard Southern Republicans -- you know, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, etc. -- were actually democrats prior to the Civil Rights era. They were called "Dixiecrats" to contrast them with the Northern Democrats (like JFK). They were reactionary racist cranks when it came to segregation and other racial laws, but they were all for the government sugar when it came to agriculture, public funding for hospitals, food assistance for poor whites, etc. etc. et al. Civil Rights and the counterculture pissed them off so much that they turned coat when Nixon (and his reactionary culture war) rose to the top. Ever since, liberalism has been associated with what the northern Democrats were basically about back in mid-century. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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