Liberal

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.

Teal

Teal (pronounced teel)

(1) Any of several species of small dabbling, short-necked freshwater ducks (such as the Eurasian Anas crecca (common teal)), of worldwide distribution and related to the mallard, travelling usually in tight flocks and frequenting ponds, lakes and marshes.

(2) A color, a medium to dark greenish blue, often mixed with traces of azure, beryl, cerulean, cobalt, indigo, navy, royal, sapphire, turquoise & ultramarine, also called teal blue and (rarely) tealturquoise, peacockblue or blueteal.

(3) As TEAl, the abbreviation of triethylaluminium (in organic chemistry, a volatile organometallic compound (Al₂(C₂H₅)₆ or Al₂Et₆) used in various chemical processes and as an ignitor in rockets and jet engines.)

(4) As TEAL, the (historical) initialism of Tasman Empire Airways Limited, the forerunner to Air New Zealand.

(5) A collective descriptor informally adopted to refer to certain nominally independent candidates contesting certain electorates in the 2022 Australian general election.

1275-1375: From Middle English tele (small freshwater duck), probably from the (unrecorded) Old English tǣle and cognate with the Middle Low German tēlink, from the from West Germanic taili, from the West Frisian tjilling (teal) and the Middle Dutch tēling (teal (source of the Modern Dutch taling)).  The Middle Low German tēlink, was from the Proto-Germanic tailijaz, of unknown ultimate origin, with no cognates outside of Germanic.  As the name of a shade of dark greenish-blue resembling the color patterns on the fowl's head and wings, it is attested from 1923 in clothing advertisements, thereby joining the long list of variations of descriptions of the variations in the shades of blue including: blue; Alice blue, aqua, aquamarine, azure, baby blue, beryl, bice, bice blue, blue green, blue violet, blueberry, cadet blue, Cambridge blue, cerulean, cobalt blue, Copenhagen blue, cornflower, cornflower blue, cyan, dark blue, Dodger blue, duck-egg blue, eggshell blue, electric-blue, gentian blue, ice blue, lapis lazuli, light blue, lovat, mazarine, midnight blue, navy, Nile blue, Oxford blue, peacock blue, petrol blue, powder blue, Prussian blue, robin's-egg blue, royal blue, sapphire, saxe blue, slate blue, sky blue, teal, turquoise, ultramarine, Wedgwood blue & zaffre.  The noun plural is teal or (especially collectively), teals; the spelling teale is obsolete.

TEAL Lockheed L-188 Electra ZK-TEB 1963 (left) & 1965 (right).  The TEAL livery was retained when the corporate name was changed in 1965, the aircraft not immediately re-painted, “Air New Zealand” replacing “TEAL JET PROP” on the fuselage as required by the rules of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (1944).

The airline TEAL (Tasman Empire Airways Limited) emerged from the Tasman Sea Agreement, an intergovernmental treaty between the Australia, New Zealand and the UK, concluded in London early in 1940.  The purpose of the operation was to provide for the trans-Tasman traffic of passengers, cargo and mail, something which had been disrupted by the outbreak of hostilities in 1939.  In the manner of a number of wartime agreements, the treaty contained a sunset clause which stipulated a termination within three months of the end of the war with Germany but such was the state of post-war civil aviation that arrangements were carried over and pre-war practices did not return to the trans-Tasman route until 1954.  As part of that re-organization, the shareholdings, which previously had been spread between the New Zealand Government (20%), Union Airways (19%), BOAC (38%) and Qantas (23%), were dissolved and the two governments assumed co-ownership until 1961 when both decided to maintain separate national carriers, TEAL and Qantas, the relationship having been strained since the Australians had insisted TEAL order the turboprop Lockheed Electra to maintain fleet standardization with Qantas while the New Zealanders wanted to upgrade to jets.  In 1965, TEAL was re-named Air New Zealand.

Lindsay Lohan in teal, Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards (2004, left), publicity shot in Greece (2019, centre) & premiere of Mean Girls (2004).

Trooping the color: The teal mafia out campaigning in the Wentworth electorate, Australian general election 2022.

The so-called “teal independents” are a number of nominally independent candidates contesting certain electorates in the 2022 Australian general election.  The teal candidates on which there has been much focus are almost all professional women drawn from outside professional politics, contesting nominally “safe” Liberal Party seats in which there’s a higher than average interest in progressive issues, especially climate change.  The use of the color teal is thought an allusion to the mixing of blue and green, blue a reference either to the “blue-blood” demographic profile of the electorates or it being the traditional color associated with conservative politics and green the environmental consciousness which the teals are making a focus of their campaigns.  Former Liberal Party prime-minister John Howard (b 1939; prime-minister 1996-2007) was not impressed by the practice of styling the teals as “independents”, claiming it was misleading given the source of some of their funding and logistical support from entities which would in the US be understood as PACs (political action committees), entities which combined lobbying with activism on specific issues.  Mr Howard suggested the teals were merely “…posing as independents” and were really “…anti-Liberal groupies”, their aim being “…to hurt the Liberal party, not to represent the middle ground of their electorates” adding “They don’t represent disgruntled Liberals.  They represent a group in the community that wants to destroy the Liberal government. It’s as simple as that.”

Flags of the Australian Liberal Party & Australian Labor Party.

Mr Howard was right in that the consequences really are simple as that: if a sufficient number of teals are successful, they will hurt the Liberal party and destroy the Liberal-National coalition government but where the teals would differ from the former prime-minister is in not conflating cause with effect.  The teal candidates have well expressed (if not especially detailed) policy objectives and are seeking to destroy the government because they wish to see alternative policies pursued and about that, voters will agree, disagree or remain indifferent.  What attracted most attention however was Mr Howard’s choice of the word “groupies” to refer to the (mostly female) teals, one critic noting an analysis of the composition of the four ministries he formed while prime-minister did suggest he was inclined to appoint women to the “touchy-feely” portfolios dealing with people while the men got the meatier appointments.  That aside, he does have a point about the word “independent” being misleading.  Historically, in Australia, it’s been understood as meaning a candidate for or member of a parliament who is not a member of a political party (within the legally-defined meaning).  That the teals are not but, though not a conventional party, the teal thing is clearly a concept, a movement or something else beyond a mere state of mind and parts of it are a framework providing the candidates with financial and administrative assistance in a more structured way that that of local volunteers.  The teals (not all of whom use the color in their advertising, one in particular running a “pink” campaign) have also been the victims of some ambush marketing, complaining that others were now muddying the waters by sending out teal-colored flyers.  They might have some difficulty in enforcing an exclusivity of right on a color, about the only restriction enforced is on purple which can’t be used in circumstances where it might be confused with something from the Australian Electoral commission which most jealously guards its purple.  Nor is some fluidity of meaning unknown in Australian politics.  During the 1970s and 1980s, in the Victorian Labor Party, although an apparent contradiction in terms, a faction was formed called the “Independents”, a faction self-described by its members as being a faction for those “who disliked factional politics”.  It was novel then and unthinkable now but happened at a time when the Left had been neutralized by federal intervention and the Right was still obsessed with the DLP (the even more right-wing Roman-Catholic breakaway) and the Cold War.  There was a gap in the market.

Flags of the Australian National Party & the Australian Greens.

Teal as blend of blue and green imparting political meaning works in Australia because the use of the colors red (of the left), blue (of the right) & green (of the greenies) is well understood.  Even the historic association of the National Party with green doesn’t cause confusion.  The National Party (originally the Country Party and briefly in some places the National-Country Party), had always used green to reflect their agrarian origins but adapted well in the 1980s to the emergence of formalized Green parties (which of course chose green for semiotic purposes).  Pragmatists, the Nationals, operating as usual like horse-traders and soft-drink salesmen, settled on a slightly darker shade with gold lettering, the traditional Australian sporting livery.  Briefly, the Nationals had flirted with shades of brown, the idea being to convey “the people of the soil” but the idea was quickly abandoned, not because brown was so associated with the Nazis (the Braunes Haus (Brown House) was their early Munich headquarters and the Surmabteilung (the SA and literally "Storm Detachment" but usually called storm-troopers) were street thugs known as the “brownshirts” because of their uniform) but because brown is such an unappealing colour and difficult for graphic artists to handle.         

Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) liked teal pantsuits and retained a fondness for the shade, even as the cut of her clothes became more accommodating.

The origin of red being associated with the politics of radicalism and revolution is generally assumed to date from the use in the French revolution where the idea was to represent the blood spilled in the overthrow of the ancien régime although the shade used should perhaps have been darkened a little in the years that followed as the revolution began “to consume its children”.  Around the planet, colors are widely used as political identifiers and, with different traditions of use and history of origin, there’s a wide divergence of meaning; what a color in one country conveys can mean the opposite in another.  There’s also the point that at one, important level, a color is just a color and the choice, even for political purposes, may be purely on aesthetic grounds:  Hitler made no secret that he choose red, white and black as for the early depictions of the swastika and other Nazi imagery because his ideological opponents, the communists, had used it with such success.  Among the best known color adoptions are orange and green in Ireland, yellow and red in Thailand and black by the so-called Islamic State (داعش, Dāʿish) and a number of Islamist and Islamic fundamentalist movements (as a symbol of jihad), saffron in India because of the traditional association with Hinduism and the Hindu nationalist movement.  The association of certain blue & red with political parties or ideologies is fairly consistent in the English-speaking world except for the curious pattern of use in the United States.

Flags of the US Republican Party (Elephants) & US Democrat Party (Donkeys).

In the US, although the idea of blue states (Democrats) and red states (Republicans) is now entrenched as part of the political lexicon, it's been that way only for two decades odd.  Red and blue had long been used to illustrate the US electoral map but there was never any consistency in how they were allotted to the parties and in some elections, different television networks might use them differently or even use different colors entirely, one of the considerations being what worked best on the then novel medium of color television.  The other influence was possibly political culture, there being in the US little tradition of a mainstream, radical party of the left so the red-blue contrast as it was understood elsewhere in the English-speaking world didn't register in the same way.  It was in the 2000 presidential election that the television networks agreed to standardize the red and blue designations for Republicans and Democrats, the incentive simply one of convenience in the reporting of the drawn-out Electoral College numbers that year.  As the red and blue imagery flowed across screens for weeks before the numbers were settled, the color associations became set in stone.

Shades of purple, the US 2004 presidential election: outcomes from Electoral College represented by state (left) and county (right). 

The idea of the US as a divided society of red states (emblematically the fly-overs) and blue states (with populations on the corrupting coastlines) is graphically illustrated when the states are colored according to the winner-takes-all system electoral college system but if the red-blue map is instead constructed county by county, a more nuanced spectrum emerges as one that is in shades of purple (purple a mix of red & blue as teal is of green & blue).  The US is a country of divisions and many of the cleavages are cross-cutting but the state by state maps do exaggerate the extent of the political polarization.

2021 McLaren GT Coupé in teal (Serpentine in the McLaren color chart).

Autogynephilia & Autogynepoliteia

Autogynephilia (pronounced aw-toh-gi-ni-fil-ee-uh)

The paraphilic tendency of someone anatomically male to be sexually aroused by the thought of instead being female.  The shortened form in psychiatry is AGP.

1989: The construct is auto + gyne + phila.  Auto is from the Ancient αὐτός (autos) (self).  Gyne is from the Ancient Greek γυνή (gunḗ) (woman); doublet of queen.  Philia is from the Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) (fraternal) (love).

Gender Identity Disorder and the DSM

The word autogynephilia was coined by US psychologist Dr Ray Blanchard (b 1945) as a component of his research into transsexualism typology.  Autogynephiliacs he categorized as those men who are sexually aroused at the idea of having a female body, a subset of those erotically aroused by cross-gender behaviors and fantasies within the general condition of gender dysphoria.  Blanchard listed four types of autogynephilic, noting (shifting degrees of) co-occurrence in studied cases was common.

(1) Transvestic autogynephilia: arousal to the act or fantasy of wearing typically feminine clothing.

(2) Behavioral autogynephilia: arousal to the act or fantasy of doing something regarded as feminine.

(3) Physiologic autogynephilia: arousal to fantasies of body functions specific to people regarded as female

(4) Anatomic autogynephilia: arousal to the fantasy of having a normative woman's body, or parts of one.

He noted that for historic reasons related both to visibility and traditional categories of psychatric illness, transvestic-fetishistism has long tended to be the most publically identified type but that the more inherently private anatomic autogynephilia type is actually is more associated with gender dysphoria and may be more prevalent.  Not only that but within that group, there were those exhibiting partial autogynephilia, being sexually aroused by the image or idea of having some but not all normative female anatomy while simultaneously retaining all their male physiology.

Just about any publishing of research in this field means walking an academic minefield but autogynephilia attracted more interest than most papers.  One theme was the reaction to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) including autogynephilia in the supporting text of Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis in the revised fourth edition (2000) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR). 

Twenty years earlier, in DSM-III (1980), the APA had, after a bit of tinkering in 1973, (almost) removed the diagnostic category of homosexuality because the “…crucial issue in determining whether or not homosexuality per se should be regarded as a mental disorder is not the etiology of the condition, but its consequences and the definition of mental disorder.”  That had been an extraordinary shift, not only in the DSM’s thirty-odd year practice but also in the traditions of western psychiatry, essentially a change in diagnostic policy toward the consequence of a condition rather than speculation of its cause.  That within a generation the APA would appear to discard this principle disappointed many.

In DSM-5 (2013), autogynephilia was included as one of the propensities of those with transvestic disorder (listed as a paraphilic disorder), characterized by the sexual excitement individuals experience when they cross-dress or think about cross-dressing, noting fantasies which accompany autogynephilia can focus on (1) the idea of having female physiological functions (2), engaging in stereotypical feminine behavior or (3), having, in whole or in part, female anatomy.  Reflecting changes in other conditions, in DSM-5, changes were made also to the diagnostic criteria.

Autogynepoliteia (pronounced aw-toh-gi-ni-poh-light-e-uh)

The adoption by a man of female identity for purposes of political advantage.

2021: The construct is auto + gyne + politeia.  Auto is from the Ancient αὐτός (autos) (self).  Gyne is from the Ancient Greek γυνή (gunḗ) (woman); doublet of queen.  Politeia (πολιτεία) is from Ancient Greek, a word used in Greek political thought, especially that of Plato and Aristotle.  It's from polis (city-state) and has a variety of meanings including "rights of citizens" to a "form of government".  The construct autogynepoliteia was created to mean “man who adopts a female identity for political advantage”.  The more fastidious Hellenic scholars might be appalled but it rolls off the tongue.

Australian Senator Eric Abetz (b 1958; senator for Tasmania (Liberal) since 1994) since first gaining pre-selection in 1993, always enjoyed the number one position on the Liberal Party ticket, the slot guaranteeing election to the upper house for a six-year term.  Unfortunately, he no longer has the numbers and on 8 May 2021 it was announced that for up-coming election, had been dropped to third place, re-election still possible but with prospects substantially diminished.  The senator soon sniffed out the skullduggery behind his demotion and it included sexism.  Noting that one of those who had usurped the desirable first and second spots was a woman, the senator declared “I can’t do anything about my sex”.  There may be also some resentment felt by the senator because he has (through the rumor-mongering of his enemies) gained a reputation as a conservative and even a reactionary.  He says that's unfair, pointing out that in the 1980s when he established his legal practice, it was the first in the city of Hobart to feature color as part of the letterhead.       

Depiction of a possible Senator Erica Betts in knee-length dress (part-number 4003105) @ US$68.88 and stiletto pumps with clutch purse (digitally altered image).

He shouldn’t have been so pessimistic, there being no reason why he couldn't have re-invented himself as Senator Erica Betts and re-contested the pre-selection through the party’s appeal processes and, after thirty odd years in the Tasmanian Liberal Party machine, surely he must have had dirt files on many of those with a vote.  While it’s (probably) still accepted orthodox science that sex can’t be changed in the biological sense, sex changes for legal and administrative purposes are hardly novel.  These things are called legal fictions and mean documents like passports, licenses and Liberal Party pre-selection papers can reflect something changed in law irrespective of biological reality.  If that seems too onerous, gender shifting is now possible and need not even be permanent, Senator Erica Betts having to exist only for pre-selection and election campaign purposes although, because that might have been thought cynical, the identity would probably have to have been maintained for the whole term.  For additional electoral advantage, he/she/they could have campaigned as a trans-rights activist because, as he pointed out when dissecting the scandal of being dumped, there was no criticism of his “…work ethic, energy, capacity, advocacy skills…” and the trans-community would have responded: “Give us leadership, Erica!” they would have cried out, “Give us some leadership!”.

Autogynepoliteia thus describes the condition sought (rather than suffered) by someone anatomically male to be instead thought female, for purposes of political advantage.  It adds to the politics of gender what is already noted in race politics.  The political right now uses the labels race-shifters (US), pretendarians (Canada) and box tickers (Australia) to describe the practice of people self-identifying as being of Indigenous or First Nations descent for one purpose or another.  Linguistically, what would make it unusually effective is the phonetic assimilation between Eric Abetz and Erica Betts.  Phonetic assimilation describes a sound-change where some phonemes (more typically consonants) shift to become more similar to other nearby sounds.  A common phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur within a word or between words.  Although often heard in normal speech, the frequency increases as delivery becomes more rapid.  Interestingly, assimilation can cause the spoken sound to differ from the accepted correct pronunciation or, to become the accepted form, the latter often making the list of canonical or received speech.

Pamphlet from Senator Abetz's "below the line" voting campaign for the 2022 Australian general election.  Senator Abetz seems now to feel "below the line" is no longer "below the belt".

It's not known if Senator Abetz seriously considered the trans option but a recent mail-drop campaign confirms he's instead running a "vote below the line" campaign, despite having previously denounced such tactics as "destabilising" (ie when used by someone else).  When Aged Care Services Minister, the hapless Richard Colbeck (b 1958; Senator (Liberal) for Tasmania 2002-2016 & since 2018) dropped to fifth on 2016 party ticket, resulting in him losing his seat, Senator Abetz was critical of a grassroots campaign supporting a “below the line” vote.  "The destabilising, below-the-line campaign (run by Senator Colbeck’s supporters) undermined the team message of stability", he said in a letter to Senate pre-selectors after the election.  His views have clearly changed and he does have the advantage of below the line campaigns being unusually effective in Tasmania because (1) the Hare Clark electoral system used in state elections, where it's possible to pick and choose candidates for the same party, means voters are well versed in the concept and (2) the small population size which means he'll need to attract comparatively few first below the line votes to secure election.  Tasmanians actually like to vote below the line and do so at about four times the frequency of voters in other states, even when there’s no concerted campaign to attract their pencil and in the 2016 poll Labor's Lisa Singh (b 1972; Senator (ALP) for Tasmania 2011 to 2019) actually gained re-election from sixth place on the basis of such votes.  That was a double-dissolution election and the quota for a seat was thus lower but she nevertheless became the first candidate elected on below-the-line votes since the system was introduced in 1984.  Because of the math however, it's going to be harder for Senator Abetz and it does appear he also holds the (doubtlessly unwanted) record as the Tasmanian senator who has in the past attracted the greatest number of last places from those who vote below the line.  His "Put Eric First" campaign may also be up against a not formerly organized but at least percolating "Put Eric Last" movement.  

His campaign is anyway different than those he's run before.  His signage, of which there seems to be much, includes only his name and the now expected 3WS (three word slogan): That he “puts Tasmania first”.  There's no mention of him being a candidate for the Liberal Party but whether an attempt to declare quasi-independent status can succeed for someone who has represented the Liberal Party for twenty-eight years and, sometimes as a cabinet minister and leader of the government in the Senate, sat through the Keating, Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison eras seems improbable.  Still, it's a strategy, even if one less likely to succeed than running as trans activist Senator Erica Betts but anyone familiar with the senator's long history will not underestimate his tenacity and understand there'll be no bowing out gracefully.