Do you think Wal-Mart is evil?
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Sunday, November 27, 2005 20:12
VIEWED: 21084
PAGE 8 of 17
Actually I don't feel threatened by either. In many ways Mrs Thatcher was one of the most progressive Prime Minister's in British history. She wasn't moping over lost Empire or wishing for it to be 1922 again, she wanted to go forwards. In fact in a lot of ways she threatened Conservitism more than anything else. Tory PM's have often been minor sons of the nobility, she was a green grocers daughter from Lincolnshire. In the end she wasn't ousted by a popular vote in a free election but by back halls manouvers by Tory grandees.
Politically "Tony" is probably closer to me than any previous Labour leader, I'm generally supportive of a lot of initiatives. If anything distresses me it is that the Tory party hasn't got off of it's ass and made a go of being an opposition. Labour were useless in the 1980's and that lack of effective opposition let the Tory leadership get lazy and sloppy. Like you say competition for ideas is a good thing, it makes good ideas better and shows bad ones up for what they are. Politically I like Blair but for the health of our Democracy I prefer there to be two clear cut and equally defended possitions and that isn't the case.
Thatcher's Tory's and Blairs New Labour are both progressive, unilateral, military leaning parties. My Conservative friends call him "Thatcher lite" and say he stole her handbag. In any case we need competition on ideas.
And you are wrong on "Liberal" please stop redefining the language to fit with your political agenda. From the Oxford English Dictionary...
liberal
• adjective 1 willing to respect and accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own. 2 (of a society, law, etc.) favourable to individual rights and freedoms. 3 (in a political context) favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate reform. 4 (Liberal) (in the UK) relating to the Liberal Democrat party. 5 (especially of an interpretation of a law) not strictly literal. 6 given, used, or giving in generous amounts. 7 (of education) concerned with broadening general knowledge and experience.
• noun 1 a person of liberal views. 2 (Liberal) (in the UK) a Liberal Democrat.
— DERIVATIVES liberalism noun liberality noun liberally adverb.
— ORIGIN originally meaning suitable for a free man: from Latin liberalis, from liber ‘free man’.
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Not fulfilling a political agenda here. Heard the term described this way all my life. Liberalis IS the root word of liberal. The extension made here, even if it's in the oed, is supposition. The relation is not directly from liber, as it is in libertarian.
Maybe in britain a liberal is a libertarian, in the united states this is neither in practice nor in usage of the word in any way true. Libertarians are generally viewed as right of center, but never view strictly as a synonym for liberal.
Continuing with my definition, which I learned in school, and has never been questioned or opposed in my 36 years on this planet, until now, by you, and is supported by american sources. (webster, I just checked, lists your definition first, under the heading "archaic" and then continues with mine.)
Bear in mind that to us, here in America, whether you think our culture is totally invalid or not, liberals have been diametrically opposed to personal liberty for a couple of centuries now, so I am not about to concede this point. I would soon concede that by your definition, America essentially has no liberals.
To move on. Liberal. When used well, generously gives so as to bring equality. Liberals, in America, if you want me to dub them a new word, Ameriliberals, or something, I mean largely democrats, and left wing fringe parties, the american left of the american center.
The American Liberals seek to bring about equality. It is there driving force, their raison d'etre. It is not to increase indidual liberty, which they never even supported. The supporters of individual liberty are libertarians.
American Conservatives seek to conserve the American way of life, and use resources sparingly.
Used well, American Liberalism creates equality through generosity. Used poorly, it leads to corruption and theft.
Conservatism, used well, preserves a way of life and the plurality of resources. Used poorly, it is miserly and selfish.
So, Bush is a bad fiscal liberal. Clinton was a sometimes bad and a sometimes good fiscal conservative.
I'm angry because it's possible that Americans have twisted your language, and for that I apologize. But what I'm most angry about is the insinuation. I certainly didn't try to redefine the words here. I think, no, I'm certain, that these are the applied definitions of these words, and that they are 100% consistant with their latin roots. The idea that liberal means libertarian is not consistant with it's latin roots, and at least in America is not commonly used in that way.
I thought I was just setting the record straight here. I think we might have a problem in communication. I don't want to argue with the OED, even if I do think it is a liberal construction, and is bound to look more friendly on the word liberal. But all academia is pretty much a liberal construction.
Liberalis means generous. it's only direct connection to liber is that it means to give freely.
Liber was originally the roman god of wine and vineyards. If you want to track things back that far. Saying that liberal is personal freedom is no more accurate than saying that liberal is alcoholic.
So...
All aspersions aside, I'm not wrong.
I would be open to the posibility that in England you may use this word to mean what we mean when we say libertarian. If this is so, then we may have more in common then I thought.
Where do the lib dems stand on the four issues I mentioned, conservation, fiscal policy, libertarianism, and militarism ?
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Both liberal and libertarian share the same Latin root. The word Liber was a title granted to free men in the Roman world. Liberalis is simply the adjective of liber, therefore it essentially means “of or relating to liber.” “Generous” is a connotation of Liberalis, not a definition. The association comes by way of another Latin word which was also a title of freedmen in the Roman world: ingenui. “Generous” is a connotation of liberalis because liberalis is the adjective of both liber and ingenui. So essentially, in its most generally definition, liberalis means of or relating to liber et ingenui.
Rome had two different types of freedmen or liberi, called the libertini and the ingenui. Both were free men under Roman law, but there was a distinction made between men who were born free (ingenui) and men who become free (libertini), and traditionally this line was loosely drawn along lines of wealth and social status. We know this because the word patricii was once synonymous with ingenui. (If you look up the word “generous” in the dictionary, you’ll see that it used to mean “highborn.”)
In a side note, the distinction between these two types of freedmen is important to understand the significance of the American concept of Liberty and why it was so different compared to previous ideas of Liberty that had been instituted throughout the classical world and even later in such nations as England for instance with induction of the Magna Carta. Liberty had always been a function of birth. In other words, a person was not guaranteed freedom unless they were born free (assuming they met what ever other social criteria, such as being male, for instance.) Otherwise, someone had to become free. This was a concept that was inherent in all forms of political liberty until the American concept of liberty created the inalienable right of freedom, which is that, presumably, for the first time in civilized history a nation had made the concept of liberty independent of birth. Now of course in a somewhat ironic twist, it would be many years before the US actually give up its own aristocratic practices, but nonetheless the Declaration of Independence remains the first document to declare freedom as independent of birth, and therefore “liberty” and not “generous” becomes the concept of freedom.
Although, some concepts of contemporary political freedom, such as socialism, are based on the idea of a “generous” kind of freedom, instead of a “liberal” kind of freedom. So aristocracy is still alive and well in our world and thriving in philosophies of the far Left, as much as the Left might want to deny that sometimes.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Wow, what an excellent reply!
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DT:
OED isn't "liberal" unless you just want to characterise my whole country and language as being part of the "conspiracy"
I'm sure that if we used "Libertarian" in place of "pedophile" for long enough people might take it to mean the same thing, or Liberals might choose to pretend their name had a different Latin root. False association, the changing of meanings of words, the manipulation of language to demonize and illigitimise ideas that you have no interlectual defence for is an old and well known trick of propagandists.
Read 1984.. redefinition of the meaning of words is the first part of manipulating truth.
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
auxarc, I'm glad that your Wal-Mart experience is a good one. Midwest and small-towns definitly need that kind of store. Now if Wal-Mart would just try not to purchase their product from questionable sources, we'd (and they'd) have it made!
Chrisisall
Thank you. I felt like Wal-Mart deserved some credit where it was due. It has helped both my family and my hometown-although I'm sure it helps that most of the employees do come from the local community and know each other by name (think Mayberry
). That being said, you are completely right about Wal-Mart's purchasing practices. Wal-Mart's good deeds shouldn't negate it's more questionable business practices. Both should be acknowledged so that the good can be encouraged and the not so good deterred.
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Walmart IS evil, or at least partly evil. I worked there two years ago, and I'll never step foot in one again.
"I aim to misbehave."
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Fletch,
I get it. not the pedophile thing. yuck. Thw two liberal definition thing.
I was saying etymologically, there was nothing wrong with liberal=alcoholic if its root is liber, which it's not.
But it's much different.
Think about it this way:
American political tradition is older than these words, as of course is british. So rather than purely copying the term, generations of American intellectuals studied the laguage, and applied the definitions of the words consistant with their latin roots as they understood them.
Independently the brits did the same thing.
The secret here seems to be that despite surface similarities, our two political systems are quite different.
It's not that "Liberal" and "Conservative" have been demonized in America, which they undoubtedly have, but that they are applies differently by their advocates here than they would be in britain.
I read several references to the idea that lib dems were actually conservative, that is, from an American perspective. A liberal democrat, in America, would mean someone like Teddy Kennedy or John Kerry.
To the people who support liberal politics in America, it's not a label slung on the left by the right, it's an ideology openly embraced. It is based not on personal freedom, that would be called libertarian (NOTE this is NOT spin, it has nothing to do with spin, people in America who believe in personal freedom call THEMSELVES libertarians, people in America who believe in a generous fiscal policy call THEMSELVES liberals)
A Liberal, American style, believes:
Strong support for govt. services and the social safety-net. Public works and a generous spending policy, most often relying on heavier taxes for the wealth and for industry, in exchange for generous services aimed at establishing universal equality.
This position, btw, is not evil, it's a position I don't happen to hold. The people who do hold it call themselves liberals.
Conservatives, American style, believe:
Limited govt. and support for a free market. Reduce taxes and spending to the minimum level necessary to sustain society while giving greater indpendence to state, groups and individuals, in order to protect preservqation of a way of life.
What I'm getting is that this is NOT what they mean in Britain. I'd like to head perhaps a more level explanation than you rant against libertarians. When I said liberal could just as easily be alcoholic as free, I meant it was equally close, as in not very, etymologically. Neither one means pedophile even remotely so I'm not sure where that came from.
So I was defending the use of "liberal" as Americans use it, to mean generous, which was probably derived by left leaning intellectuals and not right wing spinsters. If the word as you indicated means somethign different in England, it wouldn't be the first time we used the same word to mean two different things. It would also imply that a liberal democrat in the UK might not have that much in common with ted kennedy and john kerry.
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Finn,
The root of liberal, is liberalis, not liber.
Actually I looked liberalis up in a couple of online latin dictionaries, and they both defined it as "generous" and not at all as "free."
I then went and looked up the online dictionary definitions of all of the derivative words listed in the previous post by fletch, and they all meant generous.
Here's the problem with your argument: It says nothing about liberal. You make an excellent case for Liberty means free. I don't doubt that. I never said it didn't. Hence, its derivative political philosophy of freedom: Libertarian.
However. And please note this:
Liberal was already in widespread use as a word before it came into politics, and it was a word meaning generous. So it was not, on the spot, derived from the similar sounding and similarly rooted word "liberty." Liberal, from liberalis, may as you say refer to the generous nature of freedom, but it is just as logical that it is derived directly form the roman god Liber, since generosity was one of his telltale traits.
No liberal, of whom I know quite a few, over the years probably thousands, has ever said to me that the root of their philosophy is freedom. Many many have said it is generosity.
Generosity is not an evil trait, but to say, at least in American useage, that libaral means free instead of generous, is just plain inncorrect.
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Quote:That’s a strawman. Liberalis describes liber. It is the adjective of liber. It’s connation as generous is lexical not denotative. Liberalis literally means “of liber.” Liberalis is not even a root; it’s a declined form of liber. Liber is the root.
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Finn,
The root of liberal, is liberalis, not liber.
From the online Latin dictionary at the University of Notre Dame:
liberalis -e [[]of freedom; worthy of a free man , gentlemanlike, courteous, generous[]]; adv. liberaliter.
http://catholic.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=liber&ending=
As such liber is the root of liberalis, and therefore liber is the root of liberal. The dictionary says exactly that:
From the online Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin liberalis suitable for a freeman, generous, from liber free;
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/liberal
I don’t necessarily disagree with your point of view. Clearly the Left does seem to operate on a very aristocratic form of freedom in which the concept of freedom is essentially something that is granted to the masses through the generosity of the state. I don’t agree with that form of freedom. I think freedom begins and ends, more or less, with ones own personal responsibility, not entitlements. However that doesn’t mean that I’m going to buy this story that liberal is derived from liberalis and not liber, which is complete nonsense. It’s a complete misunderstanding of the grammar of the Latin word. Liberty, liberal, libertine and libertarian are all derived from the Latin root liber. That the word Liberal was in wide use as meaning “generous” lacks historical context. As I described above the concept of an inalienable right to freedom is something that is only a few hundred years old, prior to that freedom was always understood in the context of aristocracy. Prior to 1776 there was no concept of liberty that was independent of aristocracy.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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