World News

So in my country, there's literally a "reform party", which are classical liberals in the economic sense. Their own members will, indeed, call themselves liberals and mean the economic ideology. But they were also one of the two main parties behind the Estonian "kooseluseadus" (literally translated: "co-living law" or "living together law"), which doesn't legalize gay marriage as such, but rather creates a new institution that's basically the same as marriage, with all the same rights and duties, and is gender neutral. That was highly controversial in 2014 and eventually led to rise of EKRE, basically our own MAGA.

Any time they're referred to as liberals now, it is NOT about their economic policies at all. The conservatives have completely changed the meaning of the term, and now it's liberalism vs traditionalism, and it's all about the "traditional family values" and such, you know, usual conservative bullshit, clashing against "liberal values".

But this is not unique to Estonia. We imported this from the US. Or rather, our conservatives did. Similar stuff in other Eastern European countries. The American right has, for a long time now, framed liberalism as what I've described many times in this thread: Not being a bigot. Economically, the Republicans ARE liberals, just like most of the Democrats are. And if you're far enough left, both of those parties ARE the same to you, and they ARE both liberals. But closer to the center, as well as very far to the right, the term is used completely differently, and has been for so long now that you just can't use it anymore.

Personally I propose either saying neoliberalism when talking about economic liberalism (even if not completely precise language), or straight up calling it capitalism. Or hell, let's invent a new term, call it marketism. Because the meaning of the word "liberal" has shifted so much, it's no longer correct.

And yes, my comment was being facetious. I DO know what all the people here mean when they say they hate liberalism. But that's quite literally not the liberalism the article is talking about, and it's not what liberalism means to most people nowadays.

Oh, also, a funny tidbit on how badly words get misused:

So the reform party, basically center-right, being classic liberals, want lower taxation and more privatization of important industries, including healthcare and education. Fuck those guys obviously - they're only really tolerated as a "lesser evil" compared to the outright nazi-adjacent folks since the left is unpopular for a myriad of reasons. Usually they'll form coalition with the slightly more left-wing party, the social democrats.

Our far right, literally hateful bigots, will call that party not just liberals, but also commies. After all, commie is still a dirty word, we're a post-soviet nation. Why is this funny? Because the far right party does NOT support lowering taxes and privatizing healthcare, meaning economically they're actually left of the people they hatefully call communists for... Mostly the gay "marriage".

I do hope they won't succeed in the rebranding of the words "communist" and "socialist". I know that American conservatives are doing the same, but it's not really catching on as much as it did with the word "liberal".

And yes, I'm a liberal. Just not economically. I'm more of a "social democracy for now, but let's gradually go further left" kinda guy. Let private industry innovate, find new markets for whatever they can dream of, but make sure everything important is available to every single person, and that every important industry is publicly owned, not privately. And rein in the private companies sooner rather than later.