Has liberalism ever "lost" a culture war?
Ever since the conflict between anticlerical liberals and ultramontane Catholics in XIXth century Europe, passing through the conflict between individualist liberals and collectivist communists or fascists in the 20th century, to the conflict between progressive liberals and social conservatives in the 21st century, one thing remains the same, liberalism always win.
What is the point of even opposing it if you know you will lose?
Actual liberalism, or American "liberalism"? The American kind just leads to a slow and pitiful collapse.
Well, liberalism has essentially lost in place like the Middle East, hasn't it? After ww2 you could see places like Iran and Syria becoming very liberal, open, and western in a lot of senses. Now however a lot of those ideals have been heavily reigned in.
>the conflict between individualist liberals and collectivist communists or fascists in the 20th century
You make WW2 sound like an undergrad debate
Modern liberalism in the American sense has only had successes under its belt, right up til the last 10 years or so (and conservatism's had plenty of failures in that time too, it hasn't been a great decade for anybody). Equating American liberalism with self-hating identity politics, or with socialism, or whatever you're trying to do, is a pretty clear way of saying "I know nothing about political history pre-2008."
Both, I guess, since American liberalism is also winning in the United States.
You're right. I wonder why.
>muh coups
Plenty of coups in Latin America. Didn't stop liberalism winning in the end.
>Both, I guess, since American liberalism is also winning in the United States.
I really wonder where you've been for the past month.
Oh boy another thread where everyone can pretend they're right because they never explain what they mean by "liberalism"
OK. Well, I'll put my cards on the table straight away.
Yes, liberalism is a nebulous ideology, but by "modern American liberalism," I'm talking about the 20th-century political movement that, grew, over the course of a few decades, out of support for the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement, the environmentalist movement, and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the past quarter-century some of its key issues have been:
- support for a mixed economy -- a capitalist free market, but with plenty of gov't oversight of the market and a fair amount of social spending
- robust environmental protection laws
- robust employee rights / workplace discrimination laws
- the legalization of gay marriage
- dialing back military spending, lack of support for foreign intervention (yes, several prominent Dem politicians don't fit this one)
- secularization, a clear separation between church and state
>Has liberalism ever "lost" a culture war?
When empires collapse under their own degeneracy.
Yes. In Europe and America during the Depression, in the Islamic world following World War 2.
It doesn't lose forever because people don't ever stop wanting to have a say in their own lives, even if the people who rule society would prefer they stopped.
If youre referring to the election that doesn't really say much to your point. It wasn't a left vs right thing, Or a battle between liberals and conservatives.
>- support for a mixed economy -- a capitalist free market, but with plenty of gov't oversight of the market and a fair amount of social spending
Who doesn't support this?
Marxists and libertarians
What kind of libertarian?
The kind who don't want plenty of gov't oversight of the market and a fair amount of social spending.
Modern day liberals aren't liberals - they are marxist communists or fascists.
Traditional liberals are the Jordan Peterson's, Sam Harris', Sargon Of Akkad's of the world
Don't let the SJW movement hijack that word because these people are as far from liberal as you can get
Liberalism in the end always wins because individual liberty and freedom > anything else. Man will in the end always prefer himself over anybody else and the "collective" is always doomed for failure
Any of them, actually. Since both left and right wing varieties have different reasons for being against them.
I'm talking of people like this guy:
en.wikipedia.org
Or parties like this:
en.wikipedia.org
They may lose specific elections, but their ideas always win in the end. It's been like this since the XIXth century. In the case of Belgium and the Netherlands, for example, Catholic conservatives held a lot of power well into the 20th century, and yet the society ended up secularized and progressive.
That's just one branch of liberal, the left-liberal.
Right liberalism, also called libertarianism or neoliberalism, is a policy model of social studies and economics that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector. They also tend to be "social liberals" tolerating things like drug use, homosexuality, and immigration.
investopedia.com
This is also a type of liberalism which got rejected when American conservatives overwhelmingly chose protectionist Donald Trump over any of the Tea Party candidates like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.
>w-well define liberalism!
Nearly any conflict with a side that could be describe as "the more liberal one" ended with the liberals eventually winning. Liberalism is as revolutionary as a ball being pulled down by gravity or water turning about to be wet, and just as exciting.
You can stage coups and otherwise use repressive measures to try and destroy liberalism, but you can't defeat it - people always want more, and while they'll gladly trade freedom for security, they'll want that freedom back when security doesn't feel needed.
Even when the edifice of western civilization succumbs to its own rot or disappears in nuclear fire, so long as humans survive, they'll rebuild, and if they succeed in rebuilding, they'll want a return to political comforts to go with their material ones. /pol/ can rage all they like, but their struggle is one destined to be lost.
>Nearly any conflict with a side that could be describe as "the more liberal one" ended with the liberals eventually winning. Liberalism is as revolutionary as a ball being pulled down by gravity or water turning about to be wet, and just as exciting.
Because people do not stop trying to secure a better deal for themselves, even if the government tells them they already have a good deal, even if the culture tells them it's unpatriotic to demand a better deal.
>people always want more
Yeah, for themselves. Not everyone can have "more." So people create in- and out-groups and organize society in a way that benefits their group the most. This isn't really "liberals winning."
It's liberals winning when the in-group expands and when it's members have more stuff.
Conservatives win when people stop demanding more stuff, when they decide to shrink their in-group, and are instead happy accepting whatever the state provides.
Either you're missed the part of my post where I explicitly said "modern American liberalism," or you're being a twit.
In the US, people VIRTUALLY ALWAYS mean "left liberalism" when they say "liberalism." "Right liberalism" is never used, and if you use it as a synonym for libertarianism most people will probably ask you to clarify what you mean (and a minority will take it to mean socially conservative fiscal liberals, i.e. the opposite of your intended meaning).
You can think it's stupid if you want -- and I'd agree, the binary liberal/conservative split is ridiculous and harmful -- but that's how the words are used.
This, Civic nationalism + liberalism is the way to go if you want a multikulti society. But here one could argue that you are naiv because it's evident that some cultures don't mix and it leads to segregation.
A cultrually homogenic soceity that is civic nationalist is probably the best. But to achive such a thing today you need facism. (Think Sweden in the 60-80's)
The modern "Muh opression" (((liberalism))) will never succed but insted shove us in the RIGHT direction.
>when the in-group expands and when it's members have more stuff.
So what if this in-group eventually encompasses all people over the whole earth *except* some small number of sub-normals who get used as slave labor to provide free food and housing for the greater part of the population? Is that still "liberalism?"
It would be liberalism if they were trying to emancipate the slaves to add them to the in-group. It would be conservative if they were happy to let that situation continue.
But what incentive do they have to emancipate the slave class, considering their whole livelihood is dependent on them? This scenario pits ethics against self-interest. People might then pay lip service to the idea of emancipating the slave class, but they won't actually try to do that.
Sound familiar?
They would have a moral incentive, and an incentive not to allow a state to enslave people, in case it's ever used to enslave them.
>Sound familiar?
Conservatism is found in every culture. It's incestuously familiar.
because waaahhhh i should be able to dictate people's lives and everyone should follow my own unique special snowflake interpretation of 'the truth'
Doesn't explain why societies embrace Islam. Iran, Afghanistan abandoned liberalism and became more religious. Same in Egypt, the revolution was against secularism and towards Islam.
Maybe Islam is human culture's final form.
>Maybe Islam is human culture's final form.
Which Islam?
But liberals have not always been so tolerant.
XIXth century anticlericals wanted to be able to dictate people's lives over their own interpretation of "reason" which was mechanical and static. They had their own "church", the "Freemasonry", which coordinated this "truth".
It won anyway.
Who doesn't say this?
But referring to only the pop definition of "liberal" is grossly oversimplifying a complex situation. "modern American liberalism"
comes in several varieties and trying to distill it down to a single stereotype is not only inaccurate, it leads to conclusions about people which are flat out wrong or deeply misguided.
>"Right liberalism" is never used
Because conservative media has successfully retconned the word into meaning all things unamerican and have kept it nebulous and vague enough for it to be whatever boogeyman the listener wants it to be, so people who might otherwise be keen on calling themselves liberals because they're capitalists who are fine with gays getting married and immigrants taking all the jobs white people don't want, but refrain from doing so in order to avoid the ridicule of their peers.
People who think about this stuffe prefer the term neoliberal, or neoliberalism, even though the actual neoliberals refuse to call themselves that but it's still technically a type of liberalism.
en.wikipedia.org
>You can think it's stupid if you want -- and I'd agree, the binary liberal/conservative split is ridiculous and harmful -- but that's how the words are used.
Only for people who don't put too much thought into their political opinions.
>American liberalism is also winning in the United States.
Wut...
American liberalism died in the 60's, since then it's been a battle between two sides to turn the wheel furthest to the right before the fly right off the road. Yeah, we've granted homosexuals human status (narrowly), but that's about it. In every other respect, economically, militarily, and socially, we're a million times more conservative than we ever been.
Unless you mean neo-liberalism, which is another can of worms entirely. Traditionally, that was only forced upon developing nations as economic manipulation, but more recently folks have begun believing their own lies, so we're starting to see it in the developed world as well.
Well my point is, why don't contemporary liberals in the US use their unbeatable power to free all the sweat shop workers that make their food and clothing? They pay lip service to the idea because it would be the morally correct thing to do, but then they support the companies that use near-slave labor by buying iphones and jeans from h&m.
It's losing right now.
>Brexit
>Trump
Didn't liberalism basically go extinct in the Middle Ages?
Just because the conservative media insists on calling itself the liberal media and insists on saying the government is liberal doesn't mean that liberals actually have power. There are a lot of quick compromises to prevent liberal feeling from actually trying to take power, but the halfway measures are not so great.
>Everything to the right of me is conservative
classic libtard
or should I say socialist in sheep's clothing
Everything to the right of me is more conservative than me.
>or should I say socialist in sheep's clothing
Just because I own shares in a company doesn't mean I'm socialist. Oh wait.
Brexit is not anti-liberal, the EU is the anti-liberal side in that case.
Trump is also not an anti-liberal, in fact he's an ultraliberal market capitalist.
>Has liberalism ever "lost" a culture war?
Yes, just look at the formation of the USSR or the rise to power of fascists and nazis.
>Well, liberalism has essentially lost in place like the Middle East, hasn't it?
No, not at all. Salafism is just the death throes of a dying civilisation. It is very unsustainable and is already deeply unpopular.
>Modern day liberals aren't liberals - they are marxist communists or fascists.
just about the most retarded thing I've read all day desu senpai
>Brexit is not anti-liberal, the EU is the anti-liberal side in that case.
It is though. It was a vote to curb the free movement of peoples that was part of the EU charter, which will also mean the reduction of free trade because the EU is a free trade zone that can only work if nations allow free movement of capital, good AND people.
Good goy.
Obviously Salafism/12er Shia
my man
Liberalism lost the culture war against fascism on continental Europe and only managed to recover some of those losses because fascism lost an actual war against communists.
Even today in Europe "liberals" as understood originally are increasingly marginalized compared to social democrats and right-wing populists. And with the election of Donald Trump and the rising distrust in mainstream democrats in favour of SocDems like Bernie it remains to be seen if America will also follow this path.
>After ww2 you could see places like Iran and Syria becoming very liberal, open, and western in a lot of senses. Now however a lot of those ideals have been heavily reigned in.
It will not last long. THe more people see other people enjoying themselves and wageslaving, the more they want this.
It's pretty late catching this but
>Sam Harris
This man is NOT a traditional liberal in his philosophy. This image is just a snippet, so here's the full text.
>The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.
Essentially, Harris's neuroscience background is used by him to justify rejecting the idea of a universal freedom of thought and belief, which brings strongly into question if he advocates so strongly for a ideological war against Islam itself, and not its violent fundamentalist elements, what is he really defending? What western ideals? I'll be honest, the fact that I can't pin that down gives me the creeps when I see him and his smug wry grin.
Nah, mainstream views are almost entirely liberal. To be an outspoken conservative is social suicide, to be an outspoken liberal is to be a hero.
Besides, liberals control the youth, Through media, Hollywood, education, you name it. When you control the youth you control the future.
>Sargon of Akkad
kek. I would call that idiot a pseudo intellectual but even that would give him too much credit.
nice argument
What about the reformation? Protestantism is hardly more liberal than catholicism.
You must be American because American "liberals" are not liberals. American "conservatives" are (or at least were) the actual liberals.
American liberals are more like European SocDems and increasingly so with the popularity of Bernie.
In the end, everything either changes or dies.
Prohibition of Alcohol: Massive dent in World Alcohol consumption(post repeal), merely from having periods of moderation for the average drunkard, and having entire generations growing up without good alcohol access.
Middle East went from a Ottoman Empire lead by Turks, to essentially getting Balkanized.
Then the Cold War meant the segregated ruling class was free to shot, and it ended the way it did.
Even when Muslims write books about it, like Kite Runner, they always has a byline which can be summarized as "It was always like this, you just had a small part of the city which was cleaner"
It's losing a culture war right now.
Trump, Putin (and especially the success of Putin's propaganda platform RT in the west), Le Pen, Orban, ... - all of that shows that western liberalism has lost its radiance. It's not considered attractive any more by people.
> Trump, Putin, Le Pen, Orban
They all (economic) liberals.
They all have some fairly protectionist ideas and are generally critical of free trade and globalisation - which is very contrary to the liberal idea that these were good things. Not to mention the various social aspects in which they are anything but liberal.