Liberal (pronounced lib-ruhl
(U) or lib-er-uhl (non U))
(1) Favorable to progress or reform, as in political or
religious affairs (and in this context a synonym of progressive and antonyms of
reactionary.
(2) Noting or pertaining to a political party advocating
measures of progressive political reform (used often with an initial capital
letter, something in some cases perhaps influenced by the existence of
political parties with the name (where the initial capital is correct)).
(3) Of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating
liberalism, especially the freedom of the individual and governmental
guarantees of individual rights and liberties.
(4) Favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum
individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by
governmental protection of civil liberties (now better described as libertarian
now the definitions of “liberal” are so fluid).
(5) As “liberal education”, of or
relating to an education that aims to develop general cultural interests and
intellectual ability (as distinct from specific vocational training).
(6) Favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially
with respect to matters of personal belief or expression.
(7) Of or relating to representational forms of
government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
(8) Free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant, unprejudiced,
broad-minded
(9) Open-minded, free of or not bound by traditional or
conventional ideas, values etc.
(10) Characterized by generosity and willingness to give
in large amounts; unstinting, munificent, openhanded, charitable, beneficent;
lavish.
(11) Given or supplied freely or abundantly; generous.
(12) Abundant
in quantity; lavish.
(13) Not strict or rigorous; not literal (often of
translations, interpretations etc).
(14) Of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts.
(15) Of, relating to, or befitting a freeman (now rare).
(16) A person of liberal principles or views, especially
in politics or religion.
(17) A member of a “liberal” party in politics (if
applied to a part actually named “Liberal”, in some contexts an initial capital
should be used).
(18) Unrestrained, licentious (obsolete although the
sense seems still to be understood by the Fox News audience).
1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the twelfth
century Old French liberal (befitting
free people; noble, generous; willing, zealous), from the Latin līberālis (literally “of freedom,
pertaining to or befitting a free person” and used also in the sense of “honorable”),
the construct being līber (variously
“frank, free, open unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious”)
+ -ālis. The –alis suffix was from the primitive Indo-European
-li-, which later dissimilated into
an early version of –āris and there
may be some relationship with hel-
(to grow); -ālis (neuter -āle) was the third-declension
two-termination suffix and was suffixed to (1) nouns or numerals creating
adjectives of relationship and (2) adjectives creating adjectives with an
intensified meaning. The suffix -ālis was added (usually, but not
exclusively) to a noun or numeral to form an adjective of relationship to that
noun. When suffixed to an existing adjective, the effect was to intensify the
adjectival meaning, and often to narrow the semantic field. If the root word ends in -l or -lis, -āris is generally used instead although
because of parallel or subsequent evolutions, both have sometimes been applied
(eg līneālis & līneāris). The noun came into use early
in the nineteenth century. The antonym
in the sense of “permitting liberty” is “authoritarian” while in the sense of “open
to new ideas and change”, it’s “conservative”.
Liberal is a noun & adjective, liberalism, liberalizer,
liberalization, liberalist & liberality are nouns, liberalize is a verb and
liberally is an adverb; the noun plural is liberals.
The mid-fourteenth century adjective meant “generous” (in
the sense of “quantity”) and within decades this has extended to “nobly born,
noble, free” and from the late 1300s: “selfless, magnanimous, admirable”
although, as a precursor of what would come, by early in the fifteenth century
it was used with bad connotations, demoting someone “extravagant, undisciplined
or unrestrained”; Someone something of a libertine (in the modern sense)
therefore and it was in this sense Don Pedro in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616)
Much Ado About Nothing (1599) spoke
of the lustful villain in Act 4, Scene 1:
Why, then are
you no maiden, Leonato,
I am sorry you
must hear. Upon mine honor,
Myself, my
brother, and this grievèd count
Did see her,
hear her, at that hour last night
Talk with a
ruffian at her chamber window
Who hath
indeed, most like a liberal villain,
Confessed the
vile encounters they have had
A thousand
times in secret.
The evolution in use continued and while in the sixteenth
& seventeenth centuries “liberal” was used as a term of reproach suggesting
“lack of restraint in speech or action”, with the coming of the Enlightenment there
was a revival of the positive sense, the word now used also to mean “free from prejudice, tolerant, not bigoted or
narrow” and that seems to have emerged in the late 1770s although by the nineteenth
century, use often was theological rather than political, a “liberal” church (Unitarians,
Universalists et al) one not so bound the rigidities in doctrine & ritual
as those said to be “orthodox” (not to be confused with the actual Orthodox
Church). It was also in the nineteenth
century that in England the phrase “liberal
education” became widely used although what to claimed to described had a
tradition in pedagogy dating from Antiquity although the it path to modernity
was hardly uninterrupted, various forms of barbarism intervening and in
this context it probably is accurate to speak of some periods of the Medieval
era as “the Dark Ages”. There was never
anything close to a standard or universal curriculum but theme understood in
the nineteenth century was it was the only fitting education for what used to
be called “a gentlemen” (a term
related in sense development to the Classical Latin liber (a free man)) and
contrasted with technical, specialist or vocational training. Historically, the “liberal arts” inherited
from the late Middle Ages were divided into the trivium (grammar, logic & rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music
& astronomy).
Much associated with the worst of America’s “corrupting
coasts” (New York City & Hollywood), Lindsay Lohan is a classic liberal.
The
now familiar use in politics began in the first decade of the nineteenth
century, one of the many ripples from the French Revolution (1789) when it was
used to suggest a tendency to “favor freedom and democracy” over the long
dominant hierarchical systems which characterized feudal European society. In English, the label was initially applied
by opponents to whichever party or politicians championed individual political
freedoms and it seems the word often was spoken with a French accent, the
implications being that such notions were associated with chaos and ruin; the
revolution of 1789 had shocked and frightened the ruling establishment(s) just
about everywhere. However, there seems
to have been a fork in the sense development in the US which came from a
tradition which of course viewed more approvingly revolutions which swept away
tyranny and there, certainly by the 1820s, “liberal” was already being used to
mean “favorable to government action to effect social change” and some
historians have linked this to the religious sense of “free from prejudice in
favor of traditional opinions and established institutions” (and thus open
to new ideas and plans of reform); this theme has continued to this day. From the very foundations of the first
colonial settlements, in what became the US there has always been a tension
between the lure of freedom & democracy and that of religious purity, the
notion what was being created was a society ordained by God.
In politics the usual brute-force distinction is of
course between “liberals” and “conservatives” and while the nuances and
exceptions are legion, it does remain the core template by which politics is
reported and it applies to institutions as varied as the Roman curia, the Israeli
cabinet, the Church of England and presidential elections in the Islamic republic or Iran; while not
entirely accurate, it remains useful.
What is less useful is the noun “liberalism” which in the nineteenth
century did have a (more or less) accepted definition but which since has become
so contested as to now be one of those words which means what people want it to
me in any given time and place. That the
title of the “true inheritor” of liberalism has been claimed groups as diverse as certain neo-Marxists and the now defunct faction of the US Republican Party which used
to be called the “Rockefeller Republicans” illustrates the problem. Also suffering from meaning shifts so severe
as to render it a phrase best left to professional historians is “neo-liberal”,
first used in 1958 as a reference to French politics and theology but
re-purposed late in the twentieth century to describe a doctrine which was a
synthesis of laissez-faire economics, deregulation and the withdrawal of the
state from anything not essential to national security, law & order and economic
efficiency. Some critics of latter day neo-liberalism call it "an attempt to repeal the twentieth century" which captures the spirit of the debate.
1972 Chrysler Valiant Charger R/T E49 (left) and 1974
Ford Falcon XB GT Hardtop (right), 1974 RE-PO 500K endurance race, Phillip
Island, Victoria, Australia, November 1974.
The fifth round of the 1974 Australian Manufacturers'
Championship, the 1974 RE-PO 500K event was run under Group C (Touring Cars)
regulations over 106 laps (501 km (311 miles)) and one quirky thing about the
race was it being a footnote in Australian political history, both the E49
Charger of Lawrie Nelson (b 1943) and the Falcon GT of Murray Carter (b 1931)
carrying “Liberal” signage as part of a paid sponsorship deal arranged by the
Liberal Party of Australia. Carter
finished second (like the Liberal Party in that year's federal election (ie,
they lost), although then party leader, Sir Billy Snedden (1926–1987), provided one of the
more memorable post election statements when he claimed "We didn't lose,
we just didn't win enough votes to win." and he'd today be most
remembered for that had it not be for the circumstances of his death which
passed into legend. Carter would later
reveal that despite his solid result, the Liberal Party never paid up, the sponsorship deal apparently what later Liberal Party leader John Howard (b 1939; prime minister of Australia 1996-2007) might have called a "non-core promise".
Death of former Australian Liberal Party leader Sir Billy Snedden.
The Liberal Party was in 1944 founded by Sir
Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime-minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966)
as essentially an “anti-Labor Party” aggregation of various groups and he
emphasized at the time and often subsequently that he wanted his creation truly
to be a “liberal” and not a “conservative” party; it was to be a “broad church”
in which some diversity of opinion was not merely tolerated but
encouraged. Mostly he stuck to that
although some would note as the years passed, perhaps he became a little less
tolerant. By 2024, the Liberal Party of
Australia has fallen under the control of right-wing fanatics, religious
fundamentalists & soft drink salesmen and it doubtful someone like Sir
Robert would now want to join the party, even if they’d have him. The current party leader is Peter Dutton (b
1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since
May 2022) and interestingly, despite many opportunities, Mr Dutton has never
denied being a Freemason.
The arrival of political parties called “Liberal Party”
& “Conservative Party” (often with modifiers (Liberal Democrats, Liberal
Movement etc) created the need for labels which distinguish between the
“liberal” and “conservative” factions within each: while all members of a
Liberal Party are “big L Liberals” some will be “small c conservatives” and
some “small l liberals” which sounds a clumsy was of putting things but it’s
well-understood. Some though noted there
were sometimes more similarities than differences, the US writer Ambrose Bierce
(1842-circa 1914) in an entry in his Devil's Dictionary (1911) recording: "Conservative
(noun), a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from
the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." These days it he might be called a cynical
structuralist. Bierce, a US Civil War
(1861-1865) veteran, never lost his sense of adventure and, aged 71, vanished
without a trace in one of the great mysteries in American literary history. The consensus was he probably was shot dead
in Mexico and in one of his last letters there’s a hint he regarded such as fat
as just an occupational hazard: “Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a
Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty
good way to depart this life. It beats
old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in
Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia!”
So, “liberal” being somewhat contested, while the comparative
was “more liberal” and the superlative “most liberal”, modified forms appeared
including anti-liberal, half-liberal, non-liberal, over-liberal, pre-liberal, pseudo-liberal,
quasi-liberal, semi-liberal, uber-liberal, ultra-liberal, arch-liberal, classical-liberal,
neoclassical-liberal and, of course, liberal-liberal &
conservative-liberal. In modern use
there have been linguistic innovations including latte-liberal (the sort of
“middle class” liberal who, stereotypically, orders complicated forms of coffee
at the cafés & coffee shops in up-market suburbs, the term very much in the
vein of “Bollinger Bolshevik” or “champagne socialist”. A latte liberal is a variation of the earlier
wishy-washy liberal (someone who will express fashionable, liberal views but will not deign to lift a finger to further their cause) with the additional implication they are of the middle class and committed only to the point of "virtue signaling". The
portmanteau word milliberal (the construct being mill(ennial) + (li)beral is a liberal of the millennial generation (those born between 1981-1986). The term boba-liberal comes from internet-based (notably X,
formerly known as Twitter) political discourse (mostly in the US it seems) and is a
slur describing a liberal-leaning Asian American with politics or attitudes
considered too tepid or whitewashed by other Asian Americans, stereotyped as
focusing on superficial gestures over more meaningful actions especially in
regards to Asian American activism. Those who comment on stories on Fox News have
also contributed to the lexicon, the portmanteau libtard (the construct being lib(eral)
+ (re)tard) and the meaning self explanatory, as it is for NazLib, the construct being
Naz(i) + Lib(eral). So, especially in
the US, “liberal” is a word which must be handled with care, to some a mere
descriptor, to some a compliment and to others an insult. While there are markers which may indicate
which approach to adopt (is one's interlocutor carrying a gun, driving a large pick-up truck,
listening to country & western music etc), none are wholly reliable and
probably the best way is to work into the conversation a “litmus paper” phrase
like “liberal gun laws”. From the
reaction, one's path will be clear.
But although there are some for who
it seems a calling, being a liberal is not in the DNA and there have been some
who became conservative, just as there are conservatives who converted to
liberalism. Indeed, were the views of
many to be assessed, it’d like be found they are various to some degree liberal
on some issues and conservative on others, a phenomenon political scientists
call “cross-cutting cleavages”.
Political journeys are common and may be endemic to one’s aging (and
certainly financial) path, there being many youthful anarchists, socialists and
nihilists who have ended up around the boardroom table, very interested in
preserving the existing system. The path
from liberalism can also be a thing of blatant opportunism. It is no criticism of Donald Trump (b 1946;
US president 2017-2021) that he re-invented himself as an anti-liberal because
that was the way to become POTUS (president of the United States), despite for
decades his stated positions on many social issues revealing his liberal
instincts. It’s just the way politics is
done. It’s also the way business is done
and it was unfortunate Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) elected to settle in the matter
of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News
to ensure no more of Fox’s internal documents entered the public domain. Those which did appear were interesting in
that far from Fox’s anti-liberal stance being Mr Murdoch’s ideological crusade,
it was more the path to profit and were Fox’s audience to transform into
something liberal, there would go Fox News.
Once was liberal: Candace Owens
Farmer (née Owens and usually styled “Candace Owens”; b 1989) with "Candace Coffee Mug", one item in a range of
Candace merchandise.
Because race
remains the central fault-line in US politics, political cartoonists and
commentators have never been prepared to have as much fun with the black
conservatives as they enjoyed with “gay
Republicans”, the latter a breed thought close to non-existent as last as
the 1990s. Black conservatism is to some
extent aligned with black Christian religiosity but it’s a creature also of
that under-reported demographic, the successful, black middle class, a diverse
group but one which appears to have much in common with the priorities of their
white counterparts. In that sense Candace
Owens is not wholly typical but she is much more entertaining and here early
political consciousness was as a self-declared (though apparently retrospectively)
liberal before moving to a nominally conservative stance although whether this
was an ideological shift or a pursuit of clicks on the internet (on the model
Mr Murdoch values to maximize revenue from Fox News) isn’t clear. What is clear is Ms Owens knows about the
Freemasons, her research into the cult beginning apparently when she “freaked out”
after learning Buzz Aldrin (b 1930; who in 1969 was the second man to set foot
on the Moon) is a confessed Freemason. On 30 September, 2024, she discussed the
Freemasons on her YouTube channel:
What is Freemasonry? OK,
so during the late Middle Ages, the world was united under the holy Roman
Catholic church. OK? So if you had any opposition to the church
throughout Europe, you were forced to go underground. Right? We
were a Christian society. And among the
only organized groups that were able to move freely throughout Europe were
these guilds of stonemasons, and they would then be, therefore, because they
could move freely, hence, Freemasons. They
were able to maintain the meeting halls or lodges in virtually every major
city, and the Masons were, essentially, very talented at architecture, and they
had a bunch of secret knowledge — sometimes secret knowledge of architecture
and of other topics. And that knowledge
was dated back to the times of Egypt. Right? And it was essential maintaining this
knowledge in the construction of European churches and cathedrals.
So one of the things that is well known is that Freemasons were
in opposition to the church. Right? They
wanted to crush the church, which is why it is not ironic that the person who
founded the Mormon church, as just one example — many of the churches, the very
many Protestant faiths that we have — was Joseph Smith and he was a Freemason. That's a fact, just as one example. Now, you
may know some people that are Freemasons and you're going, well, I know this
person and he goes to a lodge and he's completely harmless. Yes. It is a known thing that 97 — like,
something like 97% of Freemasons are not in the top tier degree of Freemasonry.
And it is understood that at the top
tier degree of Freemasonry, you essentially become one of the makers of the
world.
So I'm — just for those of you guys who've never even heard of
that, and like I said, I would have been among you. I'm very new to relearning
American history through the lens of Freemasonry. Some known Freemasons —
George Washington was a Freemason, Thomas Jefferson was a Freemason, Benjamin
Franklin was a Freemason, Buzz Aldrin was a Freemason — don't get me started.
For those of you that have been listening to this podcast for a long time, you
already know where I'm at — or where I'm at when it comes to NASA and the weird
satanic chants that they were doing to establish the Apollo program and all the
weird stuff that happened leading up to the moon landing. So I freaked out when
I learned Buzz Aldrin was a Freemason. It's
not helping my case in believing those moon landings, I'll tell you that for
free. Franklin Roosevelt was another Freemason.
Autographed publicity photo of Buzz Aldrin issued by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) prior to the Apollo 11 Moon mission (16-24 July 1969).
Whether Ms
Owens changed her views on matters Masonic after hearing Mr Aldrin had endorsed
Mr Trump isn’t known but he issued an unambiguous statement of support,
sentiments with which presumably she’d concur.
The former astronaut was especially impressed the Republican candidate
had indicated that in a second term he would elevate space exploration as a “policy of high
importance again” and that his first administration had “reignited
national efforts to get back to the Moon and push on to Mars.” Beyond that, Mr Aldrin noted: “The Presidency
requires clarity in judgement, decisiveness, and calm under pressure that few
have a natural ability to manage, or the life experience to successfully
undertake. It is a job where decisions are made that routinely involve American
lives – some urgently but not without thought.
For me, for the future of our country, to meet enormous challenges, and
for the proven policy accomplishments above, I believe we are best served by
voting for former President Trump. I wholeheartedly endorse him for President
of the United States. Godspeed President Trump, and God Bless the United States
of America.” Masonic votes having the same value as any other, Mr Trump
welcomed the support.
Ms Owens had been scheduled to speak at a number of engagements in Australia & New Zealand but interestingly, in October 2024, the Australian government issued a press statement confirming her visa had been "canceled", based on her "capacity to incite discord", leading immediately to suspicions her silencing had been engineered by the Freemasons. It’s good we have Ms Owens to warn us about liberals
and the Freemasons, an axis of evil neglected by political scientists who tend
often to take a structralist approach to the landmarks in the evolution of the
use of the term “liberal” which they classify thus:
(1) Classical
Liberalism which emerged in the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries, was rooted in the ideas of the Enlightenment with an emphasis on limited
government, a free market (ideas as well as goods & services), individual
liberty, freedom of speech, the rule of law and the enforcement of private
property rights. The movement was a
reaction to absolute monarchies and state-dominated mercantilist economies.
(2) Social
Liberalism (understood as “liberal” in modern US use) was a layer of rather
than a fork off classical liberalism but it did accept a greater role for the
state in regulating the economy and providing social welfare to ensure a fairer
distribution of wealth and opportunity.
It was a nineteenth century development to address the excesses of
“unbridled” capitalism” and its critique of economic inequality was remarkably similar to that familiar in the twenty-first century.
(3) Neoliberalism
as a term first appeared in the late 1950s but in the familiar modern sense it
was defined in the era of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989)
& Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister 1979-1990) who embarked
on project built around a philosophy which afforded primacy to free markets,
deregulation, privatization and a reduction in government spending, often
combined with globalization. Their program simultaneously to restrict the money
supply while driving up asset prices had implications which wouldn’t be
understood for some decades. The
Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal project was a reaction to the post oil-crisis stagflation (a
portmanteau word, the construct being stag(nation) + (in)flation)) and the
alleged failure of the welfare state & the orthodoxy of Keynesian economics,
named after English economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes (later Lord
Keynes) 1883-1946).
(4) Political
Liberalism was most famously articulated by US philosopher John Rawls
(1921–2002) in his book A Theory of Justice (1971), a work nobody much under
forty should attempt because few younger than that would have read enough fully to
understand the intricacies. In
summary, it does sound remarkably simple because it calls for a pluralist
society built on principles of justice and fairness, administered by a system
of governance which permits a diversity of viewpoints while maintaining a fair
structure of cooperation. Rawls’ political
liberalism draws one in to what soon becomes and intellectual labyrinth; once
in, it’s hard to get out but it’s a nice place to spend some time and most
rewarding if one can maintain the same train of thought for several weeks.
(5) Cultural
Liberalism is not new but from the mid-twentieth century, its range of
application expanded as previously oppressed groups began to enjoy a
recognition of their rights, initially usually as a result of a change in
societal attitudes and later, by a codification of their status in law, the
matters addressed including ethnicity, feminism, civil liberties, reproductive
rights, religion and the concerns of the LGBTQQIAAOP community.
(6) Liberal
Internationalism is an approach to foreign policy (really a formal doctrine
in some countries) advocating global cooperation, international institutions,
human rights, and the promotion of democracy.
Its core tenants included support for multilateralism, international
organizations like the United Nations (UN), global trade and the promotion of liberal
democratic governance worldwide. What is
called the “liberal world order” has underpinned the western world since 1945 but
its dominance is now being challenged by other systems which have their own
methods of operation.
