Liberalism has a definition and it’s one that’s currently being ignored.
I can be very choosy in the language I use when it comes to certain subjects, and when it comes to politics, I become a stickler for accuracy in language. It’s my opinion that we form our reality by the language we use, and when we describe things inaccurately we tend to view things just as inaccurately.
Don’t say “clip” when you mean “magazine,” don’t say “pro-choice” when you mean “pro-abortion” and don’t say “NBA” when you mean “Black Lives Matter commercial.”
One thing that tends to get to me is the use of “liberal” to describe those on the left.
Looking at the left we can see pretty clearly that liberality isn’t exactly something the left treasures. They want higher taxes, more regulations on business, and the suspension of our 2nd Amendment rights. Sometimes they want a suspension of our First Amendment rights.
Their record on criminal justice is absolutely abysmal. You can ask Kamala Harris about that. Hell, you can ask Joe Biden about that too.
On the cultural front, the left thinks black people must stick to voting for Democrat or they just aren’t black. They’re not only disowned as a black person by the mainstream culture but they’re also slammed on racial lines for being black and called names like “Uncle Tom” and worse. The same can be applied to any group the left supposedly speaks for. Women and members of the LGBT community are protected until they defy the narrative, and then it’s open season.
The very existence of “cancel culture” is proof that the left’s idea of liberalism is the exact opposite of the definition. Express an idea that departs from their ideological boundaries in any way and you’ll suddenly find their incessant preaching of “tolerance” and “acceptance” had asterisks attached that you didn’t see in the fine print.
Ideological liberality is effectively against the rules according to leftists. There can be no thought but their thought, no ideas but their ideas, and if you want to have an opinion, they’ll give it to you.
The fallback on the idea that the left is “liberal” because it supports abortion, but there’s a rapidly growing school of thought that even this is bunk. Abortion is one of the most illiberal things you can do as it robs an individual of their first prized possession; their very life. It took a sexual choice to bring someone to the stage of considering an abortion and the idea of making someone else pay for your choice is also illiberal.
But completely wrecking the left’s claim to the title of “liberal” is its modern love and wish for socialist and communist systems to reign supreme. Black Lives Matter, the most popular political group in America, was founded by open Marxists and is likewise openly advocating for replacing the current system with one focused more on equality. They don’t say it out loud, but we know.
The left’s foot soldiers known as Antifa, however, are very open about the fact that they want to establish a Marxian system and do away with our capitalist constitutional republic.
Democrats on almost every level, be they politicians or media personalities, are openly supportive of the Black Lives Matter organization or Antifa. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are very openly socialistic. Bernie Sanders, also an open socialist, is often ranked as one of the most popular politicians in the Democrat party.
Socialism and Communism are both the exact opposite of liberal. They both involve the government expanding to seize control over businesses, regulating consumption and distribution, and staggeringly high tax rates. That’s just the economic aspects as well. Getting into the social control Marxist systems get up to has filled books and almost every one of them tells horror stories of gulags, reeducation camps, firing lines, and more.
Right now, the left seems to love running defense for China, a communist nation with a bad habit of human rights abuses. As we speak, the furor over its treatment of the Uighur Muslims has begun affecting its business, the loudest example of which is the movie Mulan. The CCP ordered major media outlets to discontinue coverage of the movie over the highly successful boycott that resulted from the movie being filmed near a Uighur concentration camp.
Oh, by the way, there’s nothing liberal about controlling the press.
The left is going to call themselves all sorts of flowery names, though I feel I seldomly see the term “liberal” being used amongst them any more. They like the term “progressive,” which is also a lie, especially if they’re progressing towards systems that are repeated failures.
I primarily see the right using the term “liberal” to describe the left and this needs to stop as soon as possible. Liberality is the domain of the right, not the left, especially in recent years. We, the Republicans and Libertarians, have more claim to the title of “liberal” than these Marxists do.
If we’re going to refer to them as anything, let’s be accurate with our speech. These are “leftists” to be sure. If they’re on the left and they begin preaching about the forced distribution of wealth and higher taxes then let’s call them “Marxists” because that’s what they are.
It’s a habit we need to fall out of but doing so will help humanity understand where its option truly lay. They can be free or they can be slaves. If they want to be free, they have to know where to go. Right now, we’re telling them that they need to go left to find that freedom. That needs to stop now.
