this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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Well, we should probably tell all them fancy-dan scholars in their ivory tower to stop fuckin talkin about it then, lol.
What you just stated is how liberals typically define liberalism, but it's hardly a descriptive definition. Liberalism is more accurately understood with the individual and capital positioned at the center of its organization, which means that it is capitalism as well as the racist, sexist, queerphobic, and ableist social hierarchy that maintains the violence necessary to facilitate private property are more relevant to its ideological underpinnings than something like civil freedoms. Liberalism's association with civil rights is a consequence of concessions that vulnerable groups forced those in positions of power to make. The appropriation of the concept of "progress" is itself a mechanism by which liberals contiue to colonize and claim ownership over the attribution of moral correctness. So, it's kind of gross and obviously misinformed or ignorant to subscribe to this definition.
When I'm making fun of a SocDem -- purportedly a political ideology that views liberal institutions and systems of power as effective means to deliver socialist revolutionary change -- for saying that they've just given up and will openly subscribe to liberalism, that is because it is funny to act as though that needed to be said.
Edit: realized you're European and my eyes actually rolled back up into my skull.
What i stated is what the word means. If someone says "I'm a liberal and I hold liberal values", then the values that they profess to be holding are wanting rights for the individual, consent of the governed, liberty, equality before law, ...
There were indeed self-labeled liberal parties in the 19th century that opposed giving equal rights to common people/women/minorities. Those self-professed liberals had recently acquired their rights, but were then opposing equal rights for others, which wasn't very liberal of them at all. Claiming to be liberal while acting illiberal means that they were hypocrits, but it did not change the meaning of the word liberal itself. If a totalitarian dictatorship like North-Korea calls itself a democracy, then that doesn't automatically mean that they are democratic. The meaning of what it is to be a democracy hasn't changed just because some authoritarian states misappropriated the label. People professing to hold certain beliefs, but then acting opposite of those, are common. So common that we even have a saying for it: "actions speak louder than words".