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X ` Man[_3_]

On 10/24/11 1:56 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:39:00 -0400, wrote:

I know by their postings that many conservatives here don't have a clue
what true liberalism is about. Harry doesn't have a clue, neither. So,
to clear things up, from Wiki:

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom")[1] is the belief in
the importance of liberty and equal rights.[2] Liberals espouse a wide
array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but
generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal
democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, and
freedom of religion.[3][4][5][6][7] These ideas are widely accepted,
even by political groups that do not openly profess a liberal
ideological orientation. Liberalism encompasses several intellectual
trends and traditions, but the dominant variants are classical
liberalism, which became popular in the eighteenth century, and social
liberalism, which became popular in the twentieth century.
In the 20th century "liberalism" has become everything but freedom.
For that you need to be libertarian.

"Liberals" want to tell you what kind of car to drive, (preferably
none at all), what to set your thermostat to, whether you wear a
helmet or not, who can have a gun, who gets to spend your money, which
wars we need to get into and what speech is acceptable, particularly
religious speech. I understand conservatives may be worse on many
freedom related things (sex, drugs and Rock&roll) but they don't call
themselves "liberal".

What could be funnier than iLoogy digging up a quote from Wiki and
presenting it as the "be-all and end-all" on any *.ism.

Well, your attempt isn't really any better, and for the same reasons.
You are defining a caricature. If you asked 10 liberals to define modern
liberalism, you'd get at least a handful of wildly different answers
with some commonality in some of them.