Mallard Fillmore

[Victor Steinbok]

  What about the Australian "liberals"? Another "irony" by the same
standard is "liberalization of trade" a la WTO. Conservatives like
liberalization of trade--in at least one direction--but they also like
protectionist domestic markets, so they hate WTO. It seems, in the US,
the majority of self-described conservatives (not just people who voted
for Nixon) now believe that liberal == socialist, which, more or less,
implies that they don't understand the definition of either.

I've been involved in several debates on other lists--almost entirely on
math education--where the more conservative members would invent a
definition for the terminology that they disapproved it, trashed it,
then complained that all liberals like it and pretended that their
opponents tried to change the definition in midstream by pointing out
that the just-trashed concept had nothing to do with the underlying
phenomenon. A particular favorite for such treatment is any terminology
that is open to connection to multiculturalism and relativism, such as
"constructivism" (and -ist), "inquiry-based", "socially mediated", etc.
It's not that I gave up on the idea that these arguments are
worthwhile--there is no hope to convince the self-proclaimed
conservatives. The arguments were meant to make the underinformed aware
of the issues and protect against the discussion from becoming a
monologue. In the end, I simply left the field, largely for unrelated
reasons.

In politics, on the other hand--as Lakoff pointed out (correctly, in my
view)--there is little pushback against such redefinition of basic
concepts. Thus, "liberal" becomes a dirty word in American Politics with
hardly a whimper from the self-described "liberals"

     VS-)

On 10/8/2010 11:46 AM, Eric Nielsen wrote:
> What I find ironic is to hear so many--conservatives included--express
> the need for establishing liberal democracies in the Mid East. I guess
> context is all important.
>
> In the case of politics, demonizing the other side is perfectly
> sporting--even if you muddy up the meaning of a word like "liberal".
>
> Eric

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